Through The Waterfall
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Book. Set after Dorothy 'kills' Elphaba, actually, in Son of a Witch, though you don't need to have read that, Liir goes to an Ozian prison in search of Nor and finds someone he wasn't expecting at all...
1. Southstairs

A/N: Here's my second attempt at a Wicked fanfiction. This one is actually set in _Son of a Witch_, and if you haven't read that, it's just after Elphaba's been 'killed' by Dorothy, and Liir, her son, goes with them to the Emerald City, but after they've been granted their wishes and Dorothy leaves, he decides to search for Fiyero's daughter and his half-sister Nor in Oz's notorious prison Southstairs, with, curiously enough, Elphaba's younger brother Shell as a guide. But he isn't prepared for what he'll find.

Disclaimer: I don't own the musical or the book version of _Wicked_, nor (haha) do I own _Son of a Witch_. I do, however, own a Wicked CD and a whole lot of curiously durable green eyeshadow currently covering my face. And I own my Freak License.

Liir waited patiently outside as Shell went into yet another cell. He listened, absently wondering what sort of thing Shell was going to do in there. But this time, the conversation went differently from any of the others.

"What the-" It was Shell. "You're alive?"

"Oh, of course I'm alive, you great oaf. Honestly, did you truly believe that utter tripe about water?"

Liir's ears perked up. The voice sounded awfully familiar…but it couldn't be. He wouldn't give himself false hope. Elphaba was dead. He had seen her with his own eyes- wait, actually, he hadn't. Only a hysterical Dorothy and a senile Nanny had actually seen the site of Elphaba's death. Despite himself, Liir felt hope flutter to life in his heart.

"But- you never did wash with water, and in Quadling Country you always wore those boots and those leggings, you said the damp made your feet hurt-"

"Do cats like water, Shell?"

"No-"

"Does water _melt _cats, Shell?"

"No, of course not- oh."

Liir, almost certain now that it was she, could picture the look on her face, eyebrows quirked, looking skeptically down her formidable nose with an expression of disdain, a Can-you-really-be-that-thick look.

He had been the one on the end of that look, squirming, so many times. He had hated that look.

He thought, if he saw her give him that look again, he might kiss her. Oh, not like that. Like- he could remember, once, a time before the royal family of Kiamo Ko had disappeared, when she had tried to kiss the top of his head, awkwardly, maternally, and he had twisted away and dashed off. He wished he hadn't.

"Shell, listen, there's a few people I need to know about. Oh, now, spare me that look, the Wizard's gone and you know very well I and anyone I ask about aren't exactly here for robbing some Shiz bank or knocking off some innocent in a botched burglary."

"Oh, very well, ask, I can't guarantee an answer."

"Fiyero, Prince of the Arjikis, is he here? What happened to him?"

"Is he the one they dragged from that disreputable love nest above a mill, or something like?"

"It wasn't a _love nest, _it was-" she caught herself. Liir, recalling what the Carp in the fishwell had said about his parentage, listened intently.

"Yes," she added, sighing, then, urgently, "Is he here, Shell, or is he dead; tell me, you must tell me!" Shell laughed at her, then said,

"First, _you _must tell _me_, was it you he was having an affair with, Fabala?"

_Fabala? _thought Liir. He knew the name was a derivative of Elphaba, but he'd never heard her called that before. She was Elphaba, Auntie, the Witch, Elphie- and as close to a mother as he was likely to get, but he'd never considered that she had another family as well, more than he and Nanny. He knew she had visited her sister, had gone to her funeral, but he hadn't thought anymore about it than that.

"Don't, Shell, you know only Father ever called me that, and thinking of him brings Nessarose to mind, which-"

"Fine, then, _Elphaba_, was it you?"

Liir's heart soared, hearing the name.

"Yes," she whispered, quietly, quickly, in a voice he'd never heard. A voice of love and pain and longing, soft and sincere instead of hard and sarcastic.

"And that boy, is he yours then?"

"Liir? I don't know, Shell."

"How don't you know? Either you had him, or you didn't, Elphaba, it's not some philosophical question you can dance around!"

"No, honestly, I don't know. I was in a coma for a year, Shell. I could have carried him, could have borne him- but you'd think that would have woken me up!" She said the last bit with her customary biting tone, and Shell laughed. But when she continued, it was in a serious voice:

"But Liir hasn't got the mahogany skin of the Arjikis, and he certainly isn't green!"

"Well, Elphie, Mother and Father weren't green either, and they managed to produce you."

"But Fiyero, Shell, tell me, is he here?"

"Yes, Elphaba, he is."

"Alive? Fiyero!" she cried wonderingly, a note of joy in her voice that Liir had never heard. And then- "Oh, damn, tears, they burn like fire."

Shell chuckled and said, "But your face isn't melting."

"I've told you, you imbecile, I don't melt, I merely fell. I accidentally kicked open a trapdoor in the tower, and fell, fell into the courtyard. I believe I've permanently bruised my spine. But I guess some Gale Forcers followed Dorothy after all, for they were lurking about in the courtyard and captured me when I fell."

_Well, that explains it,_ thought Liir.

"Shell, listen, wait, there's another prisoner, a girl, Fiyero's daughter, Nor-"

"Yours?"

"_Shut up_, no!"

"Oh, curious thing, that girl, your maybe-son is searching for her too."

"Liir? Where is he?" she asked, and the concern in her voice told Liir that she did care about him, however aloof she pretended to be.

"Right outside," said Shell, and he pushed open the cell door.

There she was, in all her green glory. Prison had not dimmed her. She was pacing, but Liir had known her to do that whenever she was faced with a problem, to pace, and pull her hair loose and run her hands through it as if she were searching her head for a solution. But when he stepped cautiously in, she stopped, and smiled warmly. The oddity of it made him almost shiver.

"Liir!" she cried jubilantly, hugging him, which made him stiffen awkwardly. Shell watched, amused.

"Liir," Elphaba said, "you'll get your wish yet. The Wizard's gone, but who needs him. We'll grant our own wishes," she said strangely.

"What wish?" he asked, as he had at Kiamo Ko, when she'd said nearly the same odd thing.

"For a father," she reminded him. She thought a moment. "Well, sort of. Maybe." She amended. "If-" she cut herself off.

"Shell," she said. "Where _is _Fiyero?"


	2. You'd Better Hope Not

A/N: Ok, here goes chapter 2. Yay! I was watching Supernatural and Gilmore Girls tonight- both had Wizard of Oz references!

Gilmore Girls:

Paris: And I haven't been able to sleep through the night since I saw the Wizard of Oz. Thanks, Mom.

Ha! Paris is scared of Elphaba…or, knowing Paris, Glinda.

Supernatural- well, the episode was called 'Scarecrow,' and the one guy walks up to the scarecrow and goes,

"If only I had a brain."

Hee hee, it's homicidal Fiyero!

Why is my computer so freaking slow? Argh.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Wicked, just a copy of the book and the songs on my iPod.

"Where is he, Shell, tell me before-"

"Before you turn me into a toad?"

"_Shut the hell up, Shell!_"

"No need to get so _touchy_, Elphaba. I'll tell you where this Fiyero person is. He's here, in Southstairs, down with some of the Animals that have been locked up for dissent-" Elphaba moved for the door swiftly, but Shell blocked her.

"Not so fast, Elphie."

"Whatever do you mean, 'not so fast,' Shell, I've told you all you wanted to know, not that you managed to ask anything that might have been useful to the government, great interrogator that you are, and _what _were you doing in here in the first place, since you quite obviously didn't know I was here?"

Shell turned red.

"He's been going to give medicine to a lot of prisoners on the way," Liir piped up. "All of them young women, and some of them really didn't appreciate being treated, they were screaming and crying-" Shell turned redder, and Elphaba turned forest green, her mind making the connections quite a bit quicker than Liir's.

"_Shell_, are you- do you mean to say you've been- are you _raping _the prisoners in here?"

Shell shuffled his feet and said nothing. Elphaba slapped him. Hard.

"Is that what you were-" Liir gasped. Elphaba looked at him askance.

"And you've only just figured that out?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"You _hit_ me," whined Shell. Elphaba kicked him in the groin.

"OW!"

"Well, maybe now at least you won't be abusing prisoners for at least a week," said Elphaba sniffily. "Bastard."

"Oh, _me_, really, Elphaba."

"What in Oz is that supposed to mean, you disgusting pervert?"

"I've heard the rumors, about the Wizard, and Mother's green bottle-"

"So what, I'm not Frex's daughter, does it matter? He certainly would approve far less of what you're doing than of anything I've done-"

"Really, Miss Wicked Witch of the West?"

"I can't do a sorcery right to save my life-"

"You've had an affair."

"With a consenting adult, you twit, and so did Mother and Father."

"_What?_"

"Nanny told me, Father and Mother both had an affair with a Quadling called Turtle Heart, he may have been Nessa's father."

"They _both_ did?"

"Yes, Shell."

"And you call me perverted!"

"Oh, don't worry, rape is still far worse, and you've got several kicks coming yet, and far worse, too, Shell."

Shell winced. Liir wanted to laugh at him, but, fearing the wrath of Elphaba's booted feet, kept it to himself.

"Uh, right, Fiyero- let's go get him," said Shell, hurrying to change the subject and unlock the door.

"Good, let's hope you can at least control yourself till we get there," Elphaba remarked.

"Witch," Shell hissed under his breath. Elphaba kicked him again.

"You'd better hope I'm _not_," she commented.


	3. Love and Dyspepsia

A/N: Here comes another chapter…review, people, review! I'm not doing this for my own health…well, actually, I kind of am, because if I don't it builds up in my head screaming, 'Write me! Write me!' like some kind of literary Alice in Wonderland bottle…

Disclaimer: Yeah, I wish I owned Wicked. But I don't.

They ran downstairs, unseen by any guards, although it was a miracle they weren't heard, what with Shell and Elphaba berating each other mercilessly the entire way. Liir was beginning to get a headache from the bickering when, several floors and winding hallways later, Shell paused in front of a cell door.

"Is this the place, or is it one of your 'mercy missions'?" demanded Elphaba. Shell glared at her. Liir, thinking about it, wanted to vomit, but he didn't want Elphaba yelling at him. Although hearing her yell at someone else was quite entertaining, and he was quite sure her tirades against Shell had none of the good-natured-ness Liir suspected lurked beneath the surface when she was quirking her eyebrows into that funny look and making sharp remarks at him- although sometimes, to be sure, she got into genuine all-out _rages_, and then look out. Liir thought of Lady Glinda, and he realized he actually quite preferred Elphaba's stinging commentary and slanted looks to a smothering froth of motherly fluff. Still, he daydreamed, it would be nice if she would show a little affection, just every once in a while…

"Ow!" Liir cried, pain stinging his arm where Elphaba had pinched it.

"Stop daydreaming about Dorothy and focus, this is important!" she said. Liir didn't bother to correct her. After all, if that golden Carp had been correct, it was indeed important…Shell pulled the door open, and Liir heard Elphaba's sharp intake of breath.

Her eyes skimmed over a Wolf, chained in one corner, whose eyes raised lazily to look at them before he turned away, and she searched until she found, nearly obscured by shadows, a dark man crouched in a corner, turned in towards the wall. Where the strip of sunlight from the high slit of a window hit his face, Elphaba could see what she already knew: It was Fiyero. But there was someone else she recognized in his face now; could it really be Liir? Elphaba pushed the possibilities from her mind ran towards him.

"Fiyero!" she cried, joy somewhat smoothing her sharp features and radiating from her face. Fiyero looked up, eyes bright with tears meeting hers, and he blinked in disbelief at her, as though she were a ghost. Slowly, he rose to his feet, still staring at her.

"Well," he said finally, "you were sure as hell right, Fae."

"About what?" she asked, twining her skeletal green fingers through his, blinking rapidly and turning her eyes skyward so as to keep herself from the physical pain of crying.

"I should have taken the benighted cold bath," said Fiyero, and they laughed.

They were running back up the stairs, and Fiyero was badgering Elphaba.

_Not a smart move_, thought Liir.

"And Nor?" Fiyero asked. Elphaba hadn't yet told him what had become of his family. She had dodged the other inquiries carefully, not wanting to bring it all out here. So many tragedies, her fault.

"We're looking for her," Elphaba said. "Here."

Fiyero lowered his voice. "And this boy, is he ours?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know if he's mine, or-"

"I mean I don't know if he's _mine_."

"Well, there's an easy answer for that one- did or didn't he COME OUT?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you know anything?"

"Why are you such a jackass?"

Fiyero grinned. "Prison food," he replied.

"Jackasses give me dyspepsia," said Elphie. "And headaches."

"_Everyone _gives you a headache," put in Shell.

"Shut up."

"He's right, you know," added Fiyero.

"That's because you're jackasses, the both of you."

"Why do I love you?" Fiyero pondered.

"My tact and charming personality."

Fiyero snorted. Shell out-and-out laughed. Elphaba aimed a kick at each, but half-heartedly. And, Liir noted wonderingly, she was half-laughing herself.

What _did _love do to people?


	4. Liir's Musings

A/N: Ok, here's a chapter I wrote during school the other day , but it's kind of short. Wow, I _really _need to update some of these fanfictions…argh…oh, well.

Disclaimer: Not mine, the play or the book or the music or the costumes or anything else.

Shell led them up and down stair cases, causing Elphaba to have a rant about the futility of it, and didn't he have a more _efficient _route? It wasn't as if she was going to come back and set free all the prisoners, anyway.

Shell gave her a look when she'd said that, and laughed.

"Only the ones you think are innocent," he said, leading them up another flight of stairs- hadn't they gone _down _these twenty minutes ago?

Liir's legs and bladder were beginning to complain, but he didn't want to become the focus of either Elphaba's or Fiyero's jabs. Were they his parents, he wondered, and if so, why wasn't he half so quick as either one of them? Why wasn't his skin green, or reddish brown? He set himself to studying their faces, Elphaba's sharp angles, Fiyero's smoother, noble features, searching for himself in them. He examined, too, on their long walk, what he knew of their personalities. Elphaba's deep passions, her rages, griefs, and bursts of joy at discoveries too complex for him to understand in the slightest, her crazy lack of a schedule and incomprehension of the time of day- running about at midnight, boots slamming on the stairs, doors opening, coffee, of all things, pouring, and then napping against her will, in the stairwell, standing up, at noon. She would stay shut up in her tower for days, eating nothing, and then dash downstairs, often in the middle of the night or at six in the morning, and eat everything she could lay her hands on. She would read silently for hours sometimes, and be unable to focus for more than a few minutes before jumping up and bursting out with something at other times. Liir had none of these traits, sleeping at night, awake all day, eating at set times, no emotions crossing the bounds of ordinariness. His angers weren't rages, his sadness never quite _grief_, or depression, just sorrow, and his happiness not often joy. He couldn't focus for hours upon hours, sometimes even days, as Elphaba could, but then he never flew up from a book exclaiming every two minutes. Was he like Fiyero, then, in personality? He'd have to find out. But…

Liir's reverie was interrupted by Shell, who had stopped at a cell door- hadn't they passed this before?

"We're here," Shell said grandly. "At the presidential suite of the Palace de-" Elphaba kicked him in the shin.

"Shut up, Shell, you give me a headache."

"_Everyone _gives you a headache."

"We've been over this."

"And once is enough…so…." He opened the door. "The Princess Nor!"


	5. Animal Quarter

A/N: Ok, chapter…actually, I've lost count…but it's 2:50 am right now so bear with me.

Disclaimer: Not mine, that much I know.

"Weren't we going to get a permit or something, Shell, didn't you say?" asked Liir. Elphaba and Fiyero looked at each other and burst into laughter.

"Oh, right," said Liir, embarrassed. "Unless you and Fi- he- stay here, and Shell and I go and then Shell can pretend to be transporting you to another cell or something, and it would be less suspicious-"

Elphaba looked slightly impressed- well, she didn't look sarcastic, and for her that amounted to about the same thing, but Shell was shaking his head.

"I didn't know Elphie was even here, and I'm not supposed to. I may have been able to avoid being suspected of treason simply by virtue of my family connections, oh, don't glare so, Elphie, you _are _a traitor-"

"A traitor to what? Dictatorship? Then a traitor I am, and proud to be one," Elphaba said.

"-But anyway, they'd never have trusted me with custody of you, and a good thing, too, since, frankly, you frighten me too much for me not to do what you say-"

"Oh, shut _up_," Elphaba said.

"Can we just find Nor already?" cried Fiyero agitatedly.

"Yes, _please_," Elphaba concurred.

"Fine," said Shell, leading them down another hallway and turning at the end of it, where they were hit, simultaneously, by a tremendous stench and a blast of frigid air.

"Welcome to the Animal quarter," said Shell. Fiyero and Elphaba looked incredibly furious.

"You put my daughter in the _Animal quarter_?" squealed Fiyero. Elphaba shot him an angry look.

"_What's wrong with that?_" she hissed, then turned to Shell. "You _have _an Animal quarter?" she yelled. "Why are they segregated?"

As they moved down the hallway, she grew more furious and vocal, while Fiyero stewed in silence.

"Why are they kept in this squalid place, with no opportunity for cleanliness, just so that you can point to them and say, 'Look, Animals are dirty, they are not on a par with humans, so we'd better lock them up,'?" she cried, saying the last in the pretentious, shrill voice she had once used to mock the Wizard.

"Elphaba, _shut up_. This is a prison, they have no right-"

"A prison? And just what have any of them done? Refused to stop speaking, to return to the slavery their ancestors endured? Refused to leave their professions, or even just refused to give up their children in-in some kind of ritual cannibalistic slaughter?" She was more furious than either Liir or Fiyero had ever seen her, and that was most certainly saying something.

"We're here," said Shell, ignoring his sister, who had gone a deep forest green. He unlocked the cell door. Fiyero stood clenching his fists, breathless with anticipation. Liir watched him intently, riveted. Was this man, so filled with concern for his child, really also _Liir's _father? Liir found himself hoping too hard that it was true.

Elphaba watched the boy who was maybe her son watch her lover. She saw Liir's eyes go wide as a puppy's with hope, and Elphaba groaned inwardly. She had told herself it was wrong to raise children to hope, for their hopes were sure to be dashed, but she had never been able to directly break Liir's heart. She had let him have his little flirtation with Dorothy, had even let herself hope that the Scarecrow approaching Kiamo Ko was Fiyero, but she could not bear to see the hope Liir cherished now dashed as others had been. But there was no time for her to do anything, nor to examine her newfound semblance of maternal feeling, however short-lived it might turn out to be, for the door to the cell creaked open, and Fiyero gasped.


	6. Whatever Happened to Nor?

A/N: Ok, here we get to where Nor's supposed to be. Now, some of this is taken almost directly from _Son of A Witch_, so, not mine. Obviously, nothing Fiyero or Elphaba says, or much of Shell either, since he wasn't actually in this part of the book, but since they have two fugitive prisoners with them, he and Liir couldn't quite go grab the Undermayor or whoever to be their guide.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly.

Within the cell, a female Pig and her Piglets huddled together. Most of the Piglets looked to be dead, and only the tiniest appeared alive.

"Hey, Pig," said Shell. Elphaba winced.

"Ask her name," she hissed.

"Why?" asked Shell loudly.

"Oh, for Oz' sake!" exclaimed Elphaba. "What's your name?"

"I'm not going to tell _you_," said the Sow, "Or him, at any rate," she amended, throwing her head in Shell's direction.

"I understand that," Elphaba said, rather kindly. "Anyway, we're here looking for a human girl, Nor. My bastard of a brother tells me she's supposed to be here. Can you tell us where she is?"

"What do you want with her?" the Sow asked warily.

"I'm her father," said Fiyero, stepping forward. "I've been at Southstairs for- in the name of the Unnamed God, how _long _has it been, Elphie?"

"Nearly fifteen years," answered Elphaba quietly. "And I've been here about- oh, I don't know, a week or so, perhaps- and my- that is, Liir, and my brother, have rescued us- sort of- and now we're looking for his daughter."

"Your daughter, too, is it?" asked the Sow.

"_No_, for Oz' _sake, _how many times am I to be asked that today?" cried Elphaba.

"Why was my daughter _here_, anyhow?" asked Fiyero, changing the subject. Elphaba shot him as close as she'd come to a grateful look.

"She had some developmental problems, I think," said the Sow. "And _someone _figured she'd be less offensive among, well, among Pigs, although we're as clean as it's apparently permissible to get here." Elphaba glared at Shell and muttered something about shameless exploitation to give some modicum of ill-gained truth to propaganda.

"Can you please tell us where she is?" Fiyero cried, almost begging.

"All right, all right," said the Sow. "'Do you remember when the butchers came through a week or ten days ago to cull the crop because a roast of loin was required? Some celebration Upside. It was the Wizard's deposal, wasn't it?'"

Shell looked at the seething Elphaba. "'We don't sacrifice Animals for ceremonial meals, don't be silly," he said. "You're talking through your post-delivery deliriums, Sow.'

'Whatever,' she said. 'My deliriums remind me about a couple of Horned Hogs, long in the tooth if they'd still had teeth, who were going to make better rump roasts this year than next, I'll tell you. They knew their days were numbered. One of them had broken off a horn trying to escape, and the bone spur was sharp and useful. The Hogs entered a kind of suicide pact, and the bull killed the bitch and then himself. They arranged it to be done on the same slab of old door on which they'd have been carried out for slaughtering anyway. A kind of final commentary on the quality of life at Southstairs. So they let themselves putrefy, and we neighbors left them to it for as long as we could stand it. It bought us all some time. But you know as well as I that the entrails of Horned Hogs breed a kind of maggot that likes to burrow into human orifices, especially the airless ones-'"

"Stop," said Shell.

"And there's little less airless than Southstairs-"

"I don't want to hear about it-"

"So your colleagues had to cart the carcasses Upside. They had no choice. I had no way of suspecting that the poor suckling Nor had a functioning brain left in her skull-"

Fiyero looked pained, and so did Elphaba, Liir knew no doubt for differing reasons.

"But apparently she did. She climbed onto the door-slab and pulled the Hog carcasses over her. I certainly hope for her sake she plugged all her valves. I saw her chewing candlewax once, so maybe she was softening it for just such a purpose. Anyway, hidden by corpses, she was carried away a few days ago, though what happened to her once she left our happy home I can't say." (Gregory Maguire, _Son of A Witch, 2005)_

"So- she's out of here, of Southstairs? And she was all right the last you saw of her," said Fiyero, grasping at straws.

"She's better off than she'd have been down here, that's for sure," said the Sow. "Especially since in a few years she'd have been getting visits from that one there. Oh, don't think I don't know at least some of what goes on up there."

Elphaba and Fiyero both sent furious glares at Shell.

"Are you going to hurt me?" asked Shell. Elphaba kicked him in the groin.

"Sweet Oz!" he yelled, bent over in pain.

"Told you I wasn't done," said Elphaba. "For once, I get to be the one ashamed to be related to you."

Shell pulled himself up to a standing position. Fiyero punched him in the nose. Blood poured down Shell's face.

"Damn, I think I hurt my hand," observed Fiyero, examining it.

"All right, now, let's see. How to get Upside…Liir, did you by chance decide to be useful for once and bring my broom?" asked Elphaba. Liir grinned.

"Yeah, I did," he said, pulling it out.

"Good timing, for once," said Elphaba, taking the broom. "Now…out we go!"


	7. Escape From Southstairs

A/N: Hi, people! Ugh, I hate finals so much. REVIEW! Make me happy! Hey, Kari: FIYERO!

Disclaimer: I don't own it, it isn't mine. Especially Elphaba's memory, that's from _Son of A Witch_, only Liir dreams it and I put it in my own words.

Liir's stomach flipped and flopped as he held on for dear life to the end of Elphaba's broomstick. They all clasped it, hanging from it like monkeys from a tree limb, not seated as Elphaba usually was when she went abroad, for there wasn't enough room for all three of them. Shell they had left behind in Southstairs, as he'd asked. He'd get back Upside for certain, although the prison was, "certainly where the spoiled bastard belonged, locked up in a sex-deprived, solitary confinement, and probably castrated, too," as Elphaba so delicately put it.

"You hate your brother, then?" asked Fiyero.

"No, of course not, I love the little maniac."

"You have…complex…family dynamics."

Elphaba just gave him her look. She could manage to look haughty even when holding on to a ratty old broomstick with one hand and nearly dangling off into space.

The three of them flew up and up and up the long air shaft. Liir was clutching the broom tightly with both hands white-knuckled, but Elphaba and Fiyero each only used one hand to hang on with. The others they employed in grasping each other, green and ochre fingers intertwined in a symphony of color celebrating the novelty of touch, for to each of them and to Liir as well, touch was indeed a novelty.

Elphaba had scarce realized how seldom she had felt a human touch in the fifteen years since Fiyero had disappeared. In the mauntery, of course, she'd been one of many, indistinguishable- well, as indistinguishable as a green girl could ever hope to be- and no one had much to do with her. But, she remembered, suddenly, something she hadn't before- a flash of herself in a rocking chair, a woven basket at her feet, her hair pinned up wildly, her bare foot shooting out at intervals to rock the small basket and the infant within. _Liir. _Did that mean he was hers? But after that, not even Liir had much touched her. The only time she'd ever tried to show some motherliness, conventional motherliness anyhow, to him, and he'd shrugged her off and run away to play. That had wounded her more than she liked to admit. But she wasn't very good at motherhood, anyhow. Where would she have learned it? Melena had only been alive for the first eight years of Elphaba's existence, and half that she'd spent intoxicated, or else pregnant, and ignoring Elphaba as if the girl's greenness and other flaws would rub off somehow on the unborn child. Melena had been crazy and self-absorbed and had hated Elphaba quite a bit of the time, too, as well as blamed her for Nessa's deformities, to some extent. And Nanny, well, Nanny hadn't been much of a mother to Elphaba, having been so fixated on waiting on Nessarose hand and- well, foot, anyhow. Elphie had been mostly left to fend for herself. The prickly, sarcastic shell she had developed due to this wasn't any help in developing maternal feeling either. And so she and Liir had mostly needled each other, for sarcasm was what she was best at, and most comfortable in. They'd gotten in each other's way, stumbled awkwardly through each other's lives. But she didn't think herself an entirely horrible mother, if indeed she truly _were _a mother. Just…unconventional, sort of. But Liir himself wasn't a total failure, that had to count for something. He'd lost quite a bit of his baby fat, Elphaba noted, and with that gained at least a modicum of confidence. He wasn't entirely dull- well, at least not a full-fledged idiot- and she supposed he was determined enough, which, in the end, might be what mattered most.

Fiyero couldn't believe it. He'd been resigned to spending the rest of his life in that dank hole, and he had believed Elphie was dead, and he had guessed, from what he'd heard, that Sarima, Irji, Manek, Nor, and the sisters were dead as well. Yet here he was, flying out of Southstairs- flying! Borne by his magical, so-alive, Elphaba, with a boy that might well be their son, searching for his daughter. As they emerged into the sunlight and the wonderful, wonderful, brightness and color of the Emerald City, Fiyero clutched Elphaba's green fingers tighter, her touch a balm, a benediction- from one who believed she lacked a soul. That, of all her mysteries, had always puzzled Fiyero the most. How could _she_, she the most sensitive, beneath her thick skin, she the one with the most depth of anyone, she the most individual- yes, he'd say it again, for it was true- not have a soul? If anything, he thought, she believed she lacked a soul because she was so close to it, so in touch with it, so much _herself_, that she could not detect its presence because she was so used to it being so much a part of her.

Yes, Fiyero decided. That was it. It must be.


	8. Elphaba Lives!

A/N: Here's chapter 8.

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

"Damn," said Elphaba.

"What?" asked Liir nervously, earning himself another one of Elphaba's looks.

"The broom- something's wrong," she said. "I can't keep flying- I'll try to put us down in an alley, somewhere isolated-"

Then they plunged, into a lunging plunging fall, twisting and bucking and weaving crazily, plummeting to the ground. Liir thought he was going to vomit…that was if he didn't get smashed into the ground first.

"Aaaah!" he screamed, unable to help himself. He felt his pants wet, and apparently so did Elphaba, that or she was just annoyed by his scream, for she gave him another disgusted look as she managed to alight the broom rather gracefully in an alley. Liir instantly fell to the ground, dry heaving.

"Oh, come off it, it wasn't _that _bad," said Elphaba.

"Hey, Elphie, look," said Fiyero. Elphaba turned to follow his pointing finger. ELPHABA LIVES, declared a wall.

"Well, I guess that cat's out of the bag," said Elphaba.

"Whoa, wait," said Fiyero. "That's Nor's writing!"

An hour later, Fiyero, Liir, and a heavily scarf-sheathed Elphaba sat around a table in a nearby pub, drinking coffees.

"All right…so…Nor escaped, and she was alive as of about a week ago, and obviously higher-functioning than that Sow reckoned, as she wrote a message she knew someone would get on the wall…" Elphaba began.

"All right, but where do we go from here?" asked Fiyero.

"I don't know…I could try to go through some of the old underground channels, but it's been more than fifteen years…some of them could be dead, or in Southstairs, or just out of hiding…"

"What about Lady Glinda?" Liir asked suddenly.

"Glinda?" asked Elphaba, startled.

"Yes… she got me into Southstairs. She's very kind. She's a lot more aware than she acts, too," Liir went on. There was something he'd never seen before in Elphaba's eyes, a kind of youthful look, mixed insecurity and anticipation.

"Glinda," she whispered again, awed.

"Well, I guess it's off to the rich district, then," commented Fiyero. Elphaba whacked him on the ear with a rolled up napkin.

"Says the Prince of the Arjikis with 'business interests in the Emerald City'," commented Elphaba rudely.

"Keep it down, would you?" asked Fiyero.

"Oh, hush, no one knows or cares who you were fifteen years ago."

"Thanks so much for that touching remembrance."

"You're quite welcome, Your Royal Highness."

Fiyero tried to pull at Elphaba's long braid.

"Hey," she said, almost laughing. Liir watched them, joining in the laughter.

_Like a family, _he thought in wonder. _Like a real family. _


	9. A Witch in the Kitchen

A/N: Ok, here goes another chapter.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

They gathered up their things to leave the pub when Fiyero noticed Elphaba looking as if she were going to drop right where she stood.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'm just tired."

"What, too afraid to sleep in Southstairs?" Elphaba glared at him.

"It started before that," Liir put in helpfully. Elphaba glared at him even more fiercely.

"How long do you think it's been since she slept?" asked Fiyero.

"Can we just _get _to Glinda's already?" Elphaba moaned.

It was pouring rain and Lady Glinda was hideously bored when her bell rang.

"I'll get it!" she squealed before any of the servants could intercept her. She leapt up with surprising agility, lifted the hems of her voluminous skirts above her ankles, and dashed for the door.

"Hello?" she asked cheerily, her smile fading a bit as she took in the ragtag group before her. There was a man she thought she vaguely recognized (Fiyero's head was down so that she could not see the blue diamond markings on his face), the boy, Liir, was it? The one who'd come here with Elphaba's broomstick…. And a shadowy figure behind them.

"Why, hello again, uh, Liir," Lady Glinda said slowly. "And…" the man looked up.

"Fiyero, Prince, well, former prince by now- of the Arjikis," he said, smiling. "I'm sure you remember me from Shiz, Miss Glinda."

"Of _course_," she said, smiling wider. "But who," she asked, gesturing to the shadowed figure, "is _this_?"

The figure did not speak, but simply stepped forward and removed her hood. Just as she had twenty-one years before, Glinda at first thought that what she saw was a trick of the light, brought on by the moss and ivy on her old mansion, and perhaps, this time, from carefully concealed grief. But, just as she had been twenty-one years ago, Glinda was wrong.

The girl was green.

"_Elphaba_?" Glinda gasped. "But…but…but…_how_?"

"Oh, you didn't believe all that about water _too_, did you? Honestly, Glinda, I took you for cleverer than that."

Liir looked a bit insulted.

"But you never-"

"Yet I'm standing here before you, not only having been doused by a bucket of water- rather cold water, too, I might add- but in the _rain. _Which, incidentally, is also quite cold," Elphaba said, a bit pointedly.

"Oh, oh, dear, yes, of course, come in," said Glinda, flustered.

And so they did.

After a few days, Glinda's husband Sir Chuffrey had been, for the most part, filled in. Elphaba, however, still made his skin crawl, and he tended to believe that she was indeed a Wicked Witch.

One morning, Elphaba was in the kitchen, having been commissioned by Glinda to make some apple cider for her upcoming Lurlinemas party, and so Elphaba had a huge black pot of the stuff bubbling on the stove and was stirring spices into it. Sir Chuffrey walked into the kitchen and shrieked.

"What is it?" asked Elphaba. "A mouse?"

"You- you-you-you _witch!_" Chuffrey squealed.

"So I've been told," Elphaba replied, and stirred the cider again, unperturbed.

"I _demand _to know what is in that pot!"

"Apple cider, the last time I checked it," Elphaba answered.

"And what is that you're stirring in? Eye of newt?" asked Chuffrey.

"Actually, it's cinnamon," said Elphaba. "Would you prefer eye of newt? Because I can arrange that…simply remove one of _your _eyes," she said sweetly. Chuffrey stormed out of the room, nearly knocking over Glinda.

"Why, hello, dear," she said. "What's the matter?"

"The witch," he growled.

"Elphaba? What about her?"

"Well, to begin with, whatever are we going to do with her at the ball?"

"I was thinking she'd go."


	10. No Way

A/N: Review, please! I'm happy, I was watching a Gilmore Girls rerun, and:

Lorelai: I know. I'm wicked! (see, my friend and I think Lauren Graham should play Elphaba)

Rory: (talking about Lane's hair) It's like straw.

Lane: I know. I feel like I should be singing 'If I Only Had A Brain.'

Disclaimer: Sadly, it isn't mine.

"Did you call my husband a newt?" Glinda asked later.

"Yes, but only because he called me a witch," Elphaba replied.

"You _are_ a witch!" Glinda pointed out.

"And he _is _a-" Elphaba cut herself off, deciding that calling Chuffrey a newt again was really not going to help. But Glinda got the message. Unfortunately, it was the _wrong _message.

"You _turned _Chuffrey into a newt?" Glinda squealed.

"No! And I doubt I could do it if I tried! But if you want to make sure…I could try…" Elphaba smiled mischievously.

"Elphaba!" Glinda shrieked.

"Sarcasm!" Elphaba yelled back, exasperated.

"Why don't you and Chuffrey like each other?" asked Glinda plaintively.

"He's an insufferable ass," replied Elphaba.

"Elphaba! How can you say that! That's…probably true," admitted Glinda. "But it's not as if Fiyero's always helping out-"

"No, he's a little busy searching for his missing daughter, who was last scene in a prison run- and I use that term loosely- by people like my perverted jackass brother, in which _by the way_, he also spent the last fifteen years!"

"Well. Sor-ree!" exclaimed Glinda. "And what about your son? Where _is _he?"

"One, we don't _know _he's my son, and two, I don't know where he is. Maybe had you not threatened me with bodily harm were I to leave this kitchen, I'd know, and Liir and I could be out helping Fiyero, and also maybe stabilizing our currently extremely messy government, which you seem remarkably unconcerned about the fact that you're supposedly _running _it!"

"_Was_ running it."

"Well, you should still _care_!"

"And I'm keeping you here for your own safety. There's been a lot of rumors-"

"My _safety_? Glinda, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to go insane, and then _everyone's _safety will be in jeopardy! I just got _out _of prison, remember?"

"Well, you can go out soon," said Glinda.

"Really?"

"Yes, _of course_! You can come to the Palace Ball!"

"Me."

"Yes, you!"

"_Me_, go to a government function."

"Yes…"

Elphaba merely pointed to her face.

"Wearing pancake make-up, of course."

"Hmm…no!"

"Yes."

"No!"


	11. Storytime

A/N: Ok, some of this may get a little tedious. Elphaba tells Fiyero the story of what happened since he "died." A condensed version, obviously. She doesn't tell him everything, though, not yet. Also, we get to see Elphaba a bit…tender. I've added some things I thought could have happened…and afterwards, they head for the ball, and she'll be as deriding as ever, so if you get bored, bear with me until the next chapter.

Disclaimer: It isn't mine, but then again, nor was the Wizard of Oz Gregory Maguire's…

She didn't wear the pancake makeup.

She was, however, going to go to the ball, heavily swathed in dark scarves, and, in a throwback to her days at Shiz, carrying a book and an apple in her bag.

Fiyero, hat pulled low over his face, groaned when he saw her customary accessories loaded into the bag, borrowed from Glinda.

"You don't need those, Elphaba, you're not some Crage Hall isolate anymore, not that you really seemed all that isolated to me, what with Nanny, Nessarose, Glinda, Boq, Avaric, Tibbett, Crope, Milla, Shen Shen, and I always hanging around."

"Always around, never away, and giving me quite the migraine half the time too," Elphaba remarked, but somewhat good-naturedly. "I wasn't nearly as much the, well, witch I act now, then."

"Well, Tibbett and Crope could try a saint's patience," said Fiyero. "And I know that for sure, after all, Nessarose got irked often enough at them."

Elphaba paused.

"Do you know, I saw Tibbett again," she said carefully.

"Really? Where?"

"In a mauntery."

Fiyero looked shocked. "That statement is profoundly confounding in innumerable ways. What were you doing in a mauntery? No, even better question. What was _Tibbett_ doing in a mauntery?"

"Dying," said Elphaba simply. Fiyero gaped at her. "It is," she began, "a _very _long story."

"Sixteen years ago tonight, a foolish young man refused to heed the warning of an equally foolish, idealistic, young girl, and he returned to her secret hiding place that fateful Lurlinemas Eve. But there, hiding in the shadows, the agents of a government by terror lay in wait for her. When the man entered, thinking they had found the girl or one of her fellows, they fell upon the man, beating him until the room lay thick with so much congealed blood that it was impossible to imagine that the one who had lost it could still live."

Entranced by her story, for Elphaba had always been an enchantress of words, Fiyero found himself instinctively clutching his mid-torso, where beneath his shirt an impossibly large scar, still angry and red after sixteen years, lay.

But Elphaba continued, as if in a trance.

"The guards dragged him off to prison, to die later, if not sooner. And that night, the girl returned. Seeing the blood, she screamed and collapsed. When she awoke from her faint, she vomited, and, covered in her lover's blood, decided to somehow make her way to a mauntery. She knew she could sleep safely there.

"She stumbled, bloody and only half-alive, through the busy streets clogged with Lurlinemas pedestrians and holiday cheer. Finally, she made it to the mauntery door. A young maunt led her inside and down to where the elderly maunts spent their final years, and there, the maunt laid the young woman down on a chair.

"The girl never intended to stay more than one night, but as she slept, she fell into a coma, and there she stayed for a year. Some have opined that nine months into the coma, the strange young woman gave birth, but no one ever offered proof.

"Upon waking, the girl remembered her lover's death, and the outside world, even her own inner world, seemed far too-hard- for her. The maunts offered to let her stay and become one of them, and, though she never professed her vows, she accepted.

"Often, among her other duties, the young woman was sent to care for a three-month-old baby in the orphanage, and despite her vow of silence, she would- she would-sing to him."

To Fiyero's ears, that last admission sounded as if Elphaba herself had just recalled it.

"And later, when she was sent to another mauntery, further from the Emerald City, the boy was sent along as well.

"Years passed in silence, then in whisper, in washing floors and dishes, and doing other simple tasks, and focusing on nothing but each single, separate second, and it was easy…just not to be an individual, just to float along in a haze that passed for life…then, she was assigned to the Ward for Incurables, to care for the dying, and she focused on them…and came to find dying beautiful, a pattern, lovely and natural. But still, green as she was and isolated as she had been, she was only one of many, unimportant as an individual, a-"

-she recalled her words from so long ago-

"a muscular twitch in the larger organism. She had no self, until, one day, Tibbett, a boy she had once known in college, was brought to the Ward for Incurables. That stupid, _foolish _night at the 'Philosophy Club' killed him-"

For a moment she broke out of the trance she had appeared in before, slipping into _Elphaba_ again before Fiyero, but then she was gone into the story again-

"He recognized her, he, even so weak as he was, was better at life than she was, and he forced her to be a real person-"

-again, Fiyero recalled their long ago talk about "real" or "realer" people-

"He made her remember, made her be an individual, gave her back, though she didn't want it, her_self_, and then-

He died, and she could no longer stay at the mauntery. She, the green maunt without a soul, packed her things, and a seven year old boy was sent along, on a wagon train to the Vinkus." _To pay penance and ask forgiveness of her lover's widow_¸ she nearly added, but remembered, and did not.

"Is that all?" asked Fiyero, sitting spell-bound on the bed.

"Yes…for now," added Elphie, as certain that Fiyero needed to hear the rest as she was that she needed to tell it.

"That's…not what I had expected you to have been doing these past sixteen years," was all Fiyero would say.

She smiled seductively and said, "But then I never am what you expect me to be. You never look for me in a church, and yet that is where you found me once, and where I ran when I thought you were dead."

"Perhaps, dear Fae…you are less atheist than you like to believe."

She did not protest, as he had expected. But hadn't he yet learned that she never did what was expected?

"Perhaps, Yero my hero," she whispered, almost too quietly for him to hear, "you're right."

And with that, she took his arm, and they went to the ball…


	12. At The Ball

A/N: Ok, I just read Wicked _again_, and must now write fanfiction! Yay! Oh, and I went to Dominick's and got Starbucks coffee, I walked in the door, set it on the table…and IT SPILLED! Arrrrrgh….

Disclaimer: Must we really go over this again?

Elphaba and Fiyero walked into the ballroom. It was done up all in green and gold. Banners and streamers bedecked the banisters, windows, ceiling, and fireplaces. Dozens of couples, women in long, bright gowns in the latest fashions and men in tuxedos in colors of varying ridiculousness, and hairstyles usually matching them in odiousness. Elphaba gave Fiyero a slanted look over her scarves.

"Can we go now?" she asked. Fiyero looked back at her.

"Glinda would disembowel you."

"I'm not afraid of her."

Fiyero shuddered slightly. "You should be." Elphaba sighed.

"Fine." They stood together awkwardly for a moment. Despite their disguises, in fact almost because of them, the two dark, shrouded figures stood out like sore thumbs among the bright gaudy costumes of the other guests.

"Well," said Fiyero, "shall we dance?" Elphaba gave him another look.

"For how long will you harass me if I decline?" she asked. He grinned at her.

"Until you accept."

"You could be there awhile," she warned.

"I'll wait." Elphaba smiled faintly at this.

"All right," she gave in. "One dance."

…

An hour later, Liir walked into the ballroom in an ill-fitting suit borrowed from the houseboy. He searched the room for his parents- well, maybe- and found them easily among the odd Emerald City fashions. Near the center of the dance floor, the two were waltzing quite skillfully. As Liir watched, Elphaba threw her head back and laughed, nearly unmasking herself. Fiyero carefully fixed her scarf, and she swatted his hand away from her face. He dipped her nearly to the ground, obviously threatening to drop her. At her response, he began to laugh as well. Liir smiled. He guessed she had said something like, "Get my feet back on the ground or I'll remove your testicles with my foot," like she'd once told him. Now that he thought about it, it was kind of funny…

As Liir stood near the entrance, lost in his thoughts, a girl shyly approached.

"Hi," she said quietly, scaring Liir out of his reverie.

"Whoa!" he shrieked. Several people turned to look.

"Sorry," said the girl, flushing. She was about his age and rather pretty, with long auburn hair and pretty grey eyes in a delicate, lightly freckled face. "I'm Cassia," she added. "Or Cass, if you prefer."

"I'm Liir," he said.

"I know…I mean, that's an interesting name," she replied. "Are you here with your parents?"

Liir groaned inwardly. "I don't know," he replied truthfully.

"What, can't you find them?" asked Cass.

"No…it's a long story," Liir answered, a bit wary of Cass. After all, the way she'd responded to his introduction was a bit suspicious. Even he could tell that.

"It's a long, boring, ball," Cass replied.

"True," Liir answered, laughing despite himself. Ignoring his misgivings, he decided to confide in Cass.

"Well, you see, my parents…that's a interesting conundrum," he began.

…

Elphaba, dancing with Fiyero, chanced to look over at Liir and Cass.

"Who's that?" she asked. Fiyero looked up and followed her gaze.

"How do you expect me to know this?" he asked. "That girl wasn't even born when I went to prison. How the devil would I know her? Ask Glinda, she ought to know, it's her party."

"Later," Elphaba answered, giving Cass one last suspicious glance and turning her attention back to Fiyero. "Much later."


	13. Invasion

**A/N: Sorry I haven't written in a while. Ok, I think this chapter kind of sucks, but whatever, soon there'll be some action. As soon as I figure out what I'm doing. And everyone, no, Cass is not Nor. **

**Disclaimer: If I only owned this book…**

After dancing for three hours straight, Elphaba and Fiyero were taking a break. Supposedly. Fiyero collapsed into a chair.

"Come on, let's go find out who that girl was," said Elphaba.

"What girl?" Fiyero moaned.

"The one that was talking to Liir. The redheaded one, in the grey dress. Let's go ask Glinda who she is." Elphaba paused. "Let's talk to Liir first, actually."

"Why?"

"Because, dear Yero my hero, unless he's inherited both your endearing obliviousness and my social pathology, he'll have asked the girl her name."

"Oh." Fiyero thought a moment. "Hey!"

"Get off of it, I said it was endearing."

"Fine."

"Let's go," Elphaba urged. Impatiently, she pulled Fiyero from the chair by his collar and began pulling him across the dance floor.

"Ow! Do you _ever _stop moving?" he groaned.

…

Liir and Cass had danced for a short while, but as Liir appeared to have two left feet and Cass herself wasn't winning any awards in the gracefulness category, the pair had found an unoccupied nook containing some chairs and sat down to talk.

"So, Liir, what was it you were saying about your parents? You never finished," said Cass.

"Well, I was raised in a mauntery orphanage," began Liir. "At least, until I was seven. But when I was very small, they sometimes sent one of the maunts in to care for me. She was rather young, but she was also, well- green."

"Green?" asked Cass.

"Green as sin," affirmed Liir. "And she'd sing to me, even though she was under a vow of silence." Liir was surprised by the words bubbling from his mouth like water in over boulders in a stream. He had never remembered that brief vestige of maternal feeling on Elphaba's part before, but now that he did, he also recalled her voice. It was beautiful, clear and bell-like as it soared over the high notes, rich and full as it plumbed the depths of the scale. He was struck by a sudden longing to hear it again. The memory of it stirred something deep within him. He shook his head, as if to clear it. "But then, when I was seven, she was leaving the mauntery- Sister Saint Aelphaba, she was called. And, well, they sent me with her."

"Where?" Cass queried, deep into Liir's story despite herself.

"On a wagon train, through the Kells and Kumbricia's Pass, to Kiamo Ko in the Vinkus," Liir said. Cass gasped.

"Weren't you frightened?" she asked. "With all those Winkie savages?"

Fiyero and Elphaba entered the alcove, unseen by Liir and Cass, just in time to hear the last bit of the conversation. Elphaba quirked an eyebrow over her scarf, and Fiyero grinned. He crept forward, as though he were hunting in the Grasslands once more, until he was just behind Cass. He didn't move a muscle for a long moment, and then he said, very quietly:

"Boo."

Turning, Cass saw his diamond-patterned face and screamed a piercing note that nearly burst the eardrums of the other three. Elphaba fell, laughing, against the door frame, and Fiyero fell to the floor. Liir was torn between slapping Fiyero, for humiliating Cass, and slapping Cass, for being so ignorant. He did neither, and instead sat turning red.

He and Cass sat, embarrassed, as the other two tried in vain to control themselves.

As soon as they could again speak, Elphaba, typically, did so.

"So, Liir, who is your friend?" she asked, too casually. She inwardly grimaced at herself. She _knew_ she sounded awful, and she hated it, but she'd never been able to master a parlor manner.

"Oh," said Liir. "This is Cassia…" he trailed off, waiting for her to supply her last name.

"Dawzir," she said. "Cassia Dawzir."

**A/N: Hmm….something about the look of that name seems awfully _famili_ar…**


	14. Bait

**A/N: People, seriously, get reviewing before I-have-to-kick-you! Aaargh! **

**Disclaimer: It isn't mine gets evil look on face No, just kidding. **

Elphaba, being Elphaba, had of course immediately hit upon the anagram of Cass's last name. She stared openmouthed a moment, although you couldn't tell beneath her scarves, as Cass stammered out a vague apology to Fiyero.

_Dawzir._

_Wizard. _

Elphaba seriously doubted that that was the girl's real surname. But who _was_ she? She was too young to be a Gale Forcer, and a girl besides. Was she a spy?

A thought struck Elphaba like a punch to the stomach. Was Cass- was she- a daughter of the Wizard's? Elphaba's half sister? The thought filled Elphie with revulsion and hatred, too, on her mother's behalf, although she clearly recognized the hypocrisy of her own emotions. The Wizard may have had more than one affair, true, but then so had Melena, and she'd been married, too. And Elphaba herself had been the counterpart in an affair. But knowing something in the mind and feeling it in the heart are two separate things altogether. Elphaba groaned. This whole stupid intrigue was too much like the one surrounding Liir. Why couldn't something, for once, be clear instead of murky?

Elphaba might have said something, but before she could the voice of an announcer was heard throughout the house.

"And now, everyone, please gather in the living room for tonight's main entertainment!"

Elphaba looked at Fiyero. Liir looked at them.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he said.

"So do I," murmured Elphaba. "Let's go." She grabbed Fiyero's hand and the pair strode forward, into the ballroom. Liir glanced awkwardly at Cass and they slowly followed, keeping two feet solidly between them.

In the center of the lovely, festive ballroom sat a cage containing a bear gotten up ridiculously in a green and gold collar and anklets adorned with bells. In a smaller cage growled three large, vicious looking dogs. Fiyero chanced a glance at Elphaba, who looked like she'd have a better chance than the dogs of tearing someone to pieces. She looked at the bear. It moved its great, kingly head and fixed Elphaba in its fathomless gaze, and she knew she had been wrong, initially- it was not a bear, but a Bear.

"Damn it, Glinda," Elphaba muttered under her breath, and in a flash of dark skirts she ad disappeared into the crowd. Fiyero groaned. There was no telling what insane stunt she might pull- she was liable even to climb into the cage and try to reason with the dogs, which fell firmly into the animal category. Then again, she might also try to tear Glinda to shreds, which wouldn't be very nice either. Pushing through a forest of chiffon and tulle, Fiyero tried to track her, a task made easier than in years past because of the way Elphaba's plain dark clothes stood out against the odious Emerald City finery.

"Fabala!" he called loudly, duplicating a trick that had worked once before. She swiveled on the heel of her thick boot, and at her moment of indecision he dashed up to her and caught her by the elbow so that she couldn't disappear again.

"Elphaba, what the hell are you doing?" he hissed.

"I'm only going to go have a few words with Glinda and end this charade of savagery, that's all," she replied calmly. "Now let _go_."

"No, you'll do something insane."

"Like?"

"Like jump into the cage and try to reason with the dogs."

She looked affronted by this. "I assure you, Fiyero, my last vestiges of adolescent radicalism are long past. I'm not that idealistically foolhardy any longer. I'm thirty-eight years old and I have a firm grasp of my mortality. I'm not some moronic Crage Hall girl who foolishly believes herself to be invincible."

He raised one eyebrow at her. She responded by giving him her Look.

"Let _go_, I tell you," she said.

"No."

"I'll poof you away in a puff of smoke."

"You're no more a witch than I am."

"You're a man, technically the term would be warlock," she pointed out.

"Or Wizard."

"Don't curse, please," she said, bringing it off with a straight face.

"All right then, you're no more a warlock than I am."

"Of _course _not, Fiyero, I'm a woman."

He groaned. Just then, the announcer began speaking again.

"Before we let loose the dogs, we'll rile the beast with a bit of whipping," he said, smiling sadistically, reaching for a cat o' nine tails leaning against the podium.

"Damn, we're too late to get Glinda," Elphaba said. Suddenly, she wrenched away from Fiyero and dashed off again.

"No! Fae! _Shit_!" Fiyero yelled. He began running after her. He caught up just in time to see Elphaba slipping into the cage. She was so bony that, with a little effort, she fit between two of the cage's bars. Well, Fiyero reflected, it wasn't as if the Bear could use the same method. The announcer/Bear wrangler stepped into the cage via the door, to cheers and applause. The crowd didn't appear to have noticed anything amiss about Elphaba's presence, perhaps they thought she was the wrangler's assistant.

Ha.

The man drew back his whip, and the Bear cowered. It was young, Fiyero realized, just barely grown. Elphaba flew in the blink of an eye from the corner to between Bear and tormentor, catching the tails of the whip around her arm and wincing.

"What is the meaning of this?" roared the wrangler.

"Yes, that's just what I'd like to know," declared Elphaba. She turned to face the crowd. "This is a Bear, not a savage beast. He-" here she turned to the Bear for affirmation of her guess at its gender. He nodded yes to her. "He is as sentient, as-as- civilized- as we are. More so," she went on, nearly white with passion beneath her scarves. "We are _equal_, humans and Animals! Has all of Oz forgotten that so quickly? Has the Wizard's systematic denigration and destruction of their rights so quickly destroyed our sense of justice as well?" she cried, half-pleading, half-chastising. "Stop this madness, this, this- aberration of nature!" she screamed.

The wrangler suddenly ripped away her scarf.

Everyone gasped.

"Yes," he said, clearly referring to her, "do."

"Damn," Elphaba summed up.


	15. So Crazy It Just Might Work

**A/N: Sorry to leave you all on a cliffhanger, but I did the same to myself, just to tell you. I get to practice my monologue tomorrow and get commentary, and next week I get to perform it, and it's from Wicked, and I'm hoping the instructor will let me wear green makeup. Which I have. Same as they used on Broadway. It's from a regular make-up store. So yeah. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked, but I do own its makeup! Bwahaha. **

The room was still as a portrait. No one moved. No one spoke. No one did anything but gape.

_This could be construed as very, very bad_, thought Elphaba, frozen in the glares of hundreds of people.

"Damn it, Elphaba," Fiyero muttered from the crowd. _What to do, what do I do?_ He wondered for a moment, and then it hit him. _Glinda. _Fiyero shoved his way through the crowd like the prow of a boat parting a still lake on a hot summer's day, making his way to the back of the room.

Glinda stood there, against the wall, as stunned as everyone else. Fiyero suddenly emerged from the crowd at her side.

"Glinda," he began.

"What?" she asked from an almost somnambulatory state.

"Glinda," he said more urgently, "we have to _do _something?"

"What?" she asked again, but she seemed more alert now, as though the sound of a voice had drawn her out of whatever trance the rest of the room seemed to be in.

"I don't know. Get her out of there. Make a speech, or something, distract everyone, and I'll take her back upstairs and we'll get ready to…something. I don't know. But Elphaba will be out of here and away from…_this_," he said, the words bubbling rapidly from his lips. Glinda nodded, strangely grim.

"Let's go," she said fiercely.

The wrangler had broken out of his trance and begun to move menacingly toward her. Elphaba resisted the urge to laugh in his face. After all, he still had the whip, and though she'd endured much worse, she'd rather escape this encounter unscathed, which she was pretty confident she could accomplish.

The Bear growled, a dog-like sound low in his throat, distracting the man and making him turn away from Elphaba for a moment. In that moment, Fiyero appeared at the back of the cage, on the other side of the bars.

"Slip through," he hissed insistently at Elphaba.

_Thank you_, she mouthed silently to the Bear. He nodded in response and growled again, keeping the wrangler focused on him as Elphaba slipped once again through the bars of the cage. Glinda, at the podium from which the wrangler had made his announcements, cleared her throat, snapping the crowd out of their collective hypnosis and bringing there attention to her. No one noticed Elphaba and Fiyero sneak silently from behind the cage to the doors of the ballroom, and up the stairs. No one noticed the adolescent boy who followed them out from the other side of the room. And no one noticed the slight redhaired girl who followed him out of the ballroom and then tucked herself near the front doors but out of sight.

Up in their room, Fiyero and Elphaba collapsed on the floor as soon as they pulled open the door. Sinking in just after them, Liir slammed it shut.

"No one better have heard that," Elphaba muttered into the carpet. She hit the floor with her fist. "Damn, damn, damn! I could have saved that Bear, I could have done it, and now he'll probably get beaten or killed because of me!" She rolled over onto her back. "I _hate_ infamy."

Fiyero laughed. "Most people probably do," he said.

"Yes, but not in the same way. They hate infamy and the infamous. They don't hate infamy because they _are_ infamous," Elphaba elaborated.

"You're not infamous," said Liir.

"Yes, I am," answered Elphaba. "Just because you're not afraid of me doesn't mean the rest of Oz isn't. Irrationally so, I might add, while you, on the other hand, ought to be afraid."

"No, I oughtn't," said Liir. "You oughtn't to be afraid of anything, except being afraid."

Elphaba rolled over again and raised herself up on her elbows.

"Maybe I haven't raised a complete idiot after all," she said. Liir hid his smile. It was as close to a compliment as she got. But she soon moved on to the next thing. Pulling herself up to a sitting position, knees to her chest, she rested her chin upon her kneecaps and hugged herself.

"We need a plan," she said. "And we need to leave here. I don't think we can stay any longer. The Gale Force, if it's still called that, or whatever its new incarnation is, shall probably come looking for me here."

"I don't understand why, if the Wizard is gone and was going to be deposed anyway, people still hate you," said Liir.

"That's because people are absolute morons," Elphaba enlightened him. "Anyway, let's think. Where can we go and how can we get there without being noticed?" she wondered.

"I have an idea," said Fiyero. "They'll be looking for a man and a woman, and if they're really quite smart, or have talked to your brother, a man, a woman, and a boy."

"And?" said Elphaba impatiently.

"What if you dressed as a man?" he asked.

Elphaba laughed outright for a moment, then abruptly stopped. "That could work," she said.


	16. Not on My Account

**A/N: This may be kind of short, but oh well. Also, I'm changing my penname to either elphabathedelirious32 or fabalafae32. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own it. **

"Elphaba!"

"No."

"You _have_ to."

"No."

"We have to leave!"

"No, actually, not like this."

"You've never cared how you looked before. Why start now?"

"I've never looked like _this_ before!"

Fiyero stopped pleading with her through the closet door and exchanged glances with Liir.

"It can't be that bad," ventured Liir.

Elphaba cackled from the closet. "Oh, yes, it can," she answered.

"Elphaba, come _out_," said Fiyero firmly. "We've got to _go_."

"Then find a bathroom downstairs and take turns."

"Elphaba-Elphie-Fabala-Fae!"

"Fine! Just don't call me that!" Elphaba emerged from the closet reluctantly. Fiyero stifled a laugh. She looked so…wrong. Her bony frame was lost completely in the men's clothes they'd found for her, and her face was drawn in even sharper lines with her black spun-coffee hair caught up in a hat. She gave him a look down her funny pointed nose.

"I told you," she said.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does. How am I supposed to hide my color?"

Fiyero pulled her woolen hat down lower. He adjusted her collar, turning it up around her ears. "There," he said, satisfied.

Elphaba peered at herself in the looking glass. "Hm," she said. "What's my name supposed to be?"

"That's easy," said Fiyero. "Ell."

"All right," Elphaba said slowly, still staring at herself in the mirror. She made a slightly shorter than usual, lanky, man.

"This is _very _disconcerting," she said. Then- "Oh, curses, my voice."

Fiyero considered her voice, low and rich like pouring the coffee her hair so resembled. Only, most of the time she made it as sharp and serrated as the sound of grinding coffee beans.

"It's fine," he said. "Just make it harsher."

Liir found that ironic and laughed.

Elphaba glared at him.

"What?" he protested.

"Did you mean something by that?"

"Maybe," said Liir.

"Can we please get the hell out of here before we're lynched?" begged Fiyero. "Allegedly again?"

Elphaba snorted. "Okay, let's go."

The three slipped downstairs. The party had resumed, although the talk mostly revolved around the er, _unexpected_ resurfacing of the Wicked Witch of the West, but no one noticed three men in plain dark clothes coming down the steps. No one, that was, except Glinda, who was anxiously awaiting them at the bottom. She jumped about a foot when she saw Elphaba.

"Elphie…"

"I know," Elphaba said grumpily. "And it's Ell, incidentally."

Glinda's face looked like it was about to shatter from holding in her laughter.

"Oh, go ahead and laugh," said Elphaba. "Don't break your face on my account. I know how much it means to you."

Glinda made as if to slap her, but hugged her instead.

"You'll start a nasty rumor," warned Elphaba.

"I don't care," said Glinda. "You're my best friend, Elphaba, really, you are now." She drew back to look into Elphaba's impenetrable eyes. "Will I ever see you again?" she asked.

"Nothing in life is ever certain," Elphaba replied, and then almost inaudibly, "but I hope so."

Tears in her blue eyes, Lady Glinda watched the three walk towards the door and disappear into the night.


	17. Nightlife

**A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in so long. But I do believe the events in this chapter will make up for it…tee-hee. **

**Disclaimer: It isn't mine. I wrote this chapter, now you want me to think of a clever way to say I don't own it? Not happening. **

Elphaba wanted answers, but as it turned out she'd have to wait a while to get them. She, Fiyero, and Liir traversed the dangerous, dark, dank streets of the Emerald City, though, she reminded herself, they were hardly as dangerous for three "men" as they had been for the eighteen-year-old, solitary girl without the vaguest idea of where she was going. It shouldn't have been as dangerous, even, for a green girl; usually Elphaba's strangeness protected her like green armor, a force field that kept people at bay, but that night it hadn't.

_No. _

She'd promised herself, long ago, not to think about it. She had given it her customary sardonic levity later, with herself and then with Fiyero, and she had closed off that event in her life. She was _fine_.

The frightened, broken, unloved and wounded eighteen-year-old she had briefly been was nothing to do with her now, two decades later. She felt Fiyero's hand on her arm; he had noticed her closing herself off.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said, making it so, and kissed him.

"I may have just been scarred for life," said Liir, and Elphaba fixed him with a black look.

"You'll appreciate it when you're older," she said, sarcastically. Liir smirked.

"What?" he asked. "What'll I appreciate?"

"Tolerance, for one," Elphaba replied, rapping him soundly on the head with the flat of her hand.

"Ow," said Liir.

"Oh, get a backbone," complained Elphaba.

"Well, all the stores are closed and I can't very well break into one to see if they've got any in stock," answered Liir. He was getting better at this.

"Where are we going?" asked Elphaba.

"Don't look at me; I haven't been here in fifteen years," answered Fiyero.

"And I've _never_ been here," Liir put in.

Elphaba and Fiyero exchanged glances and decided not to debate that, but Liir caught their look.

"Don't even," he said.

"All right," replied Fiyero genially, "I don't have to. You've already gotten it in your head."

"Please shut up," requested Liir.

"Oh, very well, now that we've _finally_ gotten some measure of free speech-" began Elphaba.

"Fae-" Fiyero started.

"Ell," corrected Liir. Fiyero glared at him and continued talking to Elphaba.

"Not now."

"Why not?"

"I think someone's following us."

"Well, that is a good reason," Elphaba admitted.

"Ssh," said Fiyero. "Liir, Elphie and I will keep going. You slip into the next alleyway and see who it is."

Liir nodded and ducked into the alley. Saying nothing, Elphaba and Fiyero kept walking. About five minutes later, Liir caught up with them, rejoining them by way of another alley.

"I think," he gasped (from running) "I think it's Cass."

"Cass?" asked Fiyero, "that little red-haired girl?"

"Yes," said Elphaba grimly. "I knew there was something foul about that girl-"

"Hey!" protested Liir.

"Not to mention stupid," continued Elphaba, blithely ignoring his outburst, "I mean, honestly, what kind of idiot girl walks the streets of the Lower Quarter alone at night?"

"A prostitute," said Fiyero, to be funny. Elphaba glared at him. "Did you by chance melt your sense of humor?" asked Fiyero. She gave him a much darker look and he shut up.

"Whatever else she is, I doubt she's that," Elphaba said, "although I may be wrong. But at any rate, that's not why she's following us."

"Unless she wants to proposition you," Fiyero told her. Elphaba growled.

"That was scary," Liir commented. Elphaba smiled sweetly.

"Liir, kindly shut up before I remove your testicles with my foot, would you?"

"Maybe I should remove _yours_," Fiyero said. He and Liir started laughing hysterically. Elphaba glared even more fiercely.

"Sorry," gasped Fiyero, trying to control his laughter without much success, "I couldn't resist."

"Well, try a damn sight harder next time!" snapped Elphaba. "And _do_ shut up. Seriously, have you forgotten we're being followed?"

"Well, what do you suggest?" asked Fiyero. "And I'm glad you're concerned about being followed _this time_."

"What does _that_ mean?" asked Elphaba. "Have you been stalking me?"

"Not for the past fifteen years."

"Oh." She paused, grasping it. "Well, that's your own damn fault. I told you to stay away from me that night, didn't I, but you didn't listen."

"What are you talking about?" asked Liir.

"Nothing," said Elphaba and Fiyero in unison.

"Let's try to focus on _tonight_, shall we?" asked Elphaba.

"Gladly," said Fiyero in a dirty voice.

"_Please_ shut up, am I never to have _any _peace?" Elphaba cried.

"No," chorused Fiyero and Liir.

"All right, though, seriously, how _are_ we going to lose her?" asked Liir. "Not that I think she's dangerous, in fact, she's probably _in _danger-"

"That's easy," said Elphaba, ignoring the last bit. "We're not."

"What?" asked Fiyero.

"We go to an inn, we take turns keeping watch, tomorrow we get up, give her the slip, and- I don't know- go somewhere," said Elphaba.

"Good plan," Fiyero said sarcastically, "nice details."

"You've lived with me too long," Elphaba sighed. "I'm rubbing off."

"Anyway," said Fiyero, "I have some revisions. Let's not go tomorrow-"

"We'll wait a few hours and go tonight," finished Elphaba, nodding, "Even better."

"I try," said Fiyero. Elphaba contented herself with rolling her eyes. "I know where we should go, too," added Fiyero, "but I'm not telling you."

"You'd _better _tell me," stated Elphaba.

"Ask nicely."

"That _is_ me being nice."

"Good point- oof!" cried Fiyero. In their banter, they hadn't noticed the human form lying in their path. First Elphaba, then Fiyero, then Liir, tripped and went flying, landing in a great heap.

For a moment, no one moved. There was silence, and the sounds of the city could be heard- rats scuttling, vague laughter, waves lapping against the docks from the lake, a whistle blowing-

Then the person they had tripped over awoke and sat up.

"Who's there?" she asked, for her voice revealed that she was in fact a girl, and a young one, too.

Elphaba squinted in the darkness from her squashed position, trying to see.

"Do you two _mind _getting the hell _off _of me?" she asked. "You're crushing my kidneys."

They obliged. Elphaba crept forward to see the girl more clearly.

She caught her breath. "Nor?" she asked quietly.


	18. What Happens in the Corn Exchange

**A/N: I'm really sorry to have abandoned this story for so long, and on such a cliffhanger, too, but school called. Now it's over, but for the next two weeks I have the theatre schedule from hell (I'm in two plays and the next two weeks are the production of one and the tech week of the other and then the productions of the other…) I just thought of something odd. Three generations of Elphaba's family had some sort of mysterious, unconscious circumstances surrounding either the birth or conception of a child. Think about it…Melena didn't know if she'd had an affair, Elphaba didn't know if she'd had a baby, and Liir was in a coma- in a mauntery, no less, just like Elphaba- when he and Candle conceived their baby. Weirdness…**

**Disclaimer: _Ce n'est pas a moi. _**

"Auntie Witch?" moaned the girl. "But…you're dead…"

"So you were lying?" asked Elphaba.

"Wha..?"

"You wrote _Elphaba Lives_ on that wall; you mean to tell me you were lying?"

"I didn't mean _literally_," snapped Nor weakly. Then- "Oh. You were joking."

Elphaba gently positioned the girl's head on her lap and checked her for broken bones.

"What happened?" she asked.

Fiyero pulled himself up off the ground.

"Nor?" he said, kneeling beside Elphaba, "Is it- is it really you?"

"Papa?" she asked, the childhood nickname falling easily from her lips. She had, after all, been a child the last time she had seen him and, at seventeen, was in age barely more than one now. Hearing the term, Liir felt a small pang. He came a bit closer to the huddled group.

"Liir?" said Nor. "What is going on?"

"I guess it's kind of…maybe…a family reunion?" hazarded Liir.

"I didn't think I'd ever consider myself lucky again," murmured Fiyero, one arm around Elphaba and the other hand clutching Nor's, "but I am."

Nor managed to sit up a little and for the first time noticed Elphaba's attire, though in the chaos of movement earlier her hair had fallen from below her hat in an inky curtain.

"Auntie Witch," she said, "why are you dressed like a man?"

Elphaba groaned. "I…it's a long story," she said. "You're hurt, Nor, and this isn't a good part of the city for you to be in. Let's get you out of here."

Deftly, Elphaba braided her hair without so much as a look and tucked it beneath her hat. She and Fiyero managed to get Nor upright and they balanced her between them, supporting her.

"Liir," said Elphaba, "please, go and see if Cass is still following us." Liir obeyed, feeling the sharp stab of jealousy in his stomach. He didn't see any sign of the pixie-like redhead, and hurried back to his- to Elphaba and Fiyero. And Nor.

"I didn't _see _her," he said. Elphaba gave him a sharp look.

"But was she _there_?" she asked. "Did you see any sign of her presence?"

"You should have been a lawyer," Fiyero commented. Elphaba ignored him for the moment.

"No," said Liir, "I didn't." She stared at him for a moment, then, satisfied that he was telling the truth, briefly and somewhat awkwardly rested the hand not occupied with Nor on his shoulder.

"She's hurt," Elphaba said, barely audibly, "all right?"

_Intuition down to her very eyelash_, Liir thought. _She's maybe not such a bad mother after all. If she is one. _"Yeah," he said. "I know."

"I know better than anyone how it feels, all right?" she said tersely. "Now let's go and you get yourself out of that wallowing pit of self pitying."

…

Fiyero's intended destination, as it turned out, was the old corn exchange. Elphaba got a sick look on her face when she saw it.

"No," she said.

"Fae," Fiyero replied softly, "come on. I didn't really die in there." He leaned closer. "Just remember the _other_ things," he whispered suggestively.

"If I weren't holding up your injured daughter I'd smack you," she said.

"What are you talking about?" asked Nor.

"She doesn't-" began Fiyero.

"_No_," hissed Elphaba, "I do have _some _sense of decorum, Fiyero, my _God_." With that, she began to walk forward and the others had no choice but to follow.

The blood was mostly gone, thankfully. There were brown stains on the floor, but nothing too awful. Dead, withered, brown rose petals littered the floor and a fine grey dust covered the table and books.

"There's no place like home," Elphaba muttered sarcastically. She and Fiyero laid Nor down on the old mattress.

"There is probably something deeply ironic in that," observed Elphaba.

"Definitely," agreed Fiyero.

Liir sighed and flopped into a chair.

"There's nowhere else in here to sleep, is there?" he asked somewhat rhetorically. Elphaba answered anyway. "No, I'm sorry," she said sincerely. Fiyero found his old opera cape and an old dress of Elphaba's lying on the floor.

"Here you are, if this helps," he said to Liir.

"Thanks," Liir replied. He lay the clothes down on the floor and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

Elphaba went over to Nor's side. "Nor," she said to the half-conscious girl, "Nor, dearie, I need you to tell me what happened to you."

"Then promise me you'll tell me what you and Papa were talking about," muttered the girl, who was perhaps more conscious than they had thought.

"And tell me the rest of what happened while I was imprisoned," added Fiyero. Elphaba sighed.

"I feel like I'm back in that bar in Shiz with everyone coercing me into singing," she said. "All right, fine. But Nor, you have to tell us. We have to know what's wrong."

"Well," said Nor, "I broke out of Southstairs, and they carried the dead Hogs I was hiding under to Potter's Field- the mass dumping ground for the bodies of Animals and the poor. I climbed out from under them and ran out of there as fast as I could. I fell asleep outside someone's doorstep and I guess I was lucky- it was a member of the old resistance. They took me in and found out I knew Auntie Witch- Fae, they called you- and I ran around helping them for a week and a half, mostly painting _Elphaba Lives _on walls. But then a few days ago, some Gale Forcers were chasing us down an alley, and we got separated. I fell down and knocked myself out. I woke up with some old lady who called herself Yackle taking care of me. She gave me something…it made me feel better for a few days, but then I was just walking down the street and I fell over, horribly sick. I couldn't get up. That's when you found me."

Elphaba looked grim. "I _knew _that- that- demon was…" she trailed off. "Damn!" She looked back at Nor. "What about before?" she asked. "How long were you in Southstairs?"

"A little more than a year, I guess," said Nor. "Before that- there were a group of us- you saw-" She paused, painfully. "I don't remember much after the first year or so. I- I would leave myself, it was like. I blocked myself off."

Elphaba looked at her with understanding. She bit her lip.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," she said. "I tried, you know, but the Wizard…"

"It's not your fault," said Nor. "Now, tell us. You promised."

Elphaba groaned. "I did, didn't I. Well…all right. I'll start at the beginning, for Nor." She looked at Fiyero. "You. Help me."

"All right," he said. "I'll tell this part."

"I used to come here on business, all the time. And one year- you were two, I think, Nor- I went into a church. I always liked art, I think maybe if I hadn't been a prince I might have been a starving artist living in a garret- but I wasn't. So I went into a church looking for a portrait of Saint Glinda. I was sent into the back of the church, and in the small room someone looked to be praying. When she stood up, I saw that she was- green. She was Miss Elphaba, with whom I had gone to college and who had then disappeared after she went to the Emerald City with Miss Glinda to see the Wizard, the night the rest of us-" he looked at Nor and cleared his throat. "Well. Yes. She wouldn't admit to her own identity, but I _knew _it was her. So I finally got her to agree to meet me an hour later. But I knew her and I knew she wouldn't do it. So I found the back way out of the church and followed her. Then I called out the nickname Nessarose told us she had- Fabala- and she turned around before she realized what she was doing. And I followed her inside, up here, and made her talk to me-"

"You did not _make _me do anything. I chose to talk to you," Elphaba interjected haughtily.

"Fine, whatever. So after that we-" He paused. "Nor, darling, you have to understand something. You're old enough now, I think. In the Vinkus, you know, most children are betrothed around the age of seven-"

"You and your brothers weren't because your mother was worried about your future, and what might happen to you outside the castle, because we thought Fiyero was dead," Elphaba threw in. "She told me that."

"How the _hell_?" said Fiyero.

"Ssh," Elphaba said, putting a finger to his lips. "After this story is finished."

"All right," said Fiyero, looking mystified. "Anyway, that's what happened with your mother and me. We never got the chance to choose who we loved. And that was always all right before, but I was sent to college. Things were different. I learned different customs, I learned that outside of our tribe people chose to marry the person that they wanted to. And I found myself in love with Elphaba. So we…had an affair."

Nor said nothing.

"Here," Fiyero went on. "And Elphaba was in the resistance, as you've figured out. One night, I came back here and the Gale Force started beating me, then when I was all but dead they dragged me off to Southstairs."

"And I came back later, and found all his blood, _everywhere_, and I thought he had to be dead," said Elphaba. "So I went to a mauntery. I was in a coma for a year and I might have given birth to Liir, it's unknowable, and then I stayed there, for seven more years, and then- well, then I came to Kiamo Ko, to confess and apologize to Sarima, but she wouldn't let me."

"What else?" asked Fiyero. "There's more, I can tell."

"Some soldiers came to stay…to spy on us and more, it turned out. And Nor discovered that the broom one of the maunts- Mother _Yackle_- had given me could fly. So I taught myself to use it, and one day I flew off to Munchkinland to see Nessa and Fat- Frex. But when I came back, the soldiers had taken everyone but Nanny and Liir, who had followed them but whom they had left behind. I searched for them, for seven years, but I never found them. Until Nessarose died. A tornado came through and deposited a house on her, which unfortunately was not entirely undeserved."

Fiyero could see the pain on Elphaba's face, so he interrupted to lighten the mood. "My, aren't you disapproving," he said, grinning.

"I suppose I am," replied Elphaba instantly, smiling back. "So I went to her funeral, and so did the Wizard, apparently. He asked to meet with me and I was given no choice. He found the page of the ancient spell book Sarima had kept in the attic that I had with me, and he demanded its source. He told me Sarima and her sisters and Irji had been killed. He showed me- he showed me Nor, tortured and shackled and, it seemed, mentally _gone_. But he wouldn't surrender her to me. I went to the Emerald City and hit the quite possibly dead Madame Morrible over the head with a trophy and went to Avaric's and got drunk and debated the nature of evil, and on the way home I saw the Clock of the Time Dragon under which I had been born. And the dwarf who manned the thing showed me a play…about my namesake, Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall, and then that I was apparently the Wizard's bastard daughter."

"What?" gasped Fiyero.

"Precisely," said Elphaba, taking a bit of pleasure in the idea despite herself. "He created the problem of me himself."

"You're not a problem," Fiyero assured her.

"To him I am, and while I may not be singularly a problem I certainly have them," she responded. "But after I went home, the girl Dorothy who had been in that house that fell on my sister and who had taken her enchanted shoes, came to Kiamo Ko. The Wizard had told her to kill me. But she insisted she didn't mean to, and it all ended with me catching fire, her throwing water on me, me falling and somehow getting captured and…well…that's about it," she finished. She left out her futile hopes and heartache about the Scarecrow.

"Auntie Witch," murmured Nor drowsily, "you forgot Manek. And Liir and the fishwell."

"Ah, yes," said Elphaba. "So I did. But you know those stories, so you go to sleep and I'll tell your father, all right?"

"Mmmhmm," said Nor, and did as she was bid.

"What happened to Manek?" asked Fiyero.

"Well, Yero, your son was a little bastard, I'm sorry to tell you. Rather like Avaric. But he was constantly mean to Liir, and I've gathered that this meanness eventually caused Liir to fall in the fishwell and nearly die. We pulled him out and I resuscitated him, eventually, and then…Manek was walking through the courtyard, and an icicle fell on him and stabbed him through the skull."

"But…you sounded as if you'd done it, Fae."

She looked away. "Maybe I did! But I didn't mean to! The Princess Nastoya wouldn't let me stay, she wouldn't teach me how not to hurt people, and Sarima told me about hot anger and cold anger and I was thinking about it and staring at the icicle and then it fell! I didn't want for it to happen! Just like the bees! I didn't _mean _it!" she cried into his shoulder. "When I _did _mean it, with Madame Morrible, it didn't work and when I didn't I killed them, and I didn't want to!"

Understandably confused and unable to take it all in, Fiyero just held her.

"I really am a Witch," she whispered.

And then they made love on the floor and afterwards they both cried.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not your fault," he told her.

"Your family is dead," she said.

"We'll just have to build a new one, then."

He smiled somewhat wickedly at her.

"I'm thirty-eight years old, Yero," she groaned. "And I think I'm pregnant."


	19. The Present Past

**A/N: I'm not at rehearsal. I'm supposed to be but I'm not. I'm sick. I should be being productive and typing my Tale of Two Cities summer reading journal, but I'm not. This is more fun. And it's summer. So I'm executively giving myself a break. Besides, I _wrote_ it, I just didn't _type_ it, and I'll bet not all that many people have actually started at all yet and here I am halfway done. So…ha! Also, I'm going with the assumption that the head of each mauntery is known as Mother Maunt. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

"What- what- what?" spluttered Fiyero. "From- that time- at Glinda's?"

"Yes," said Elphaba. "If- I don't know. It's just a feeling."

"So you can't tell me whether you've _had _a child, but you can tell me you're going to?"

"I was younger then, and busy, and I had adrenaline flowing nearly constantly! How was I supposed to know? And back then I was less the Witch I am now!" she hissed.

"I'm sorry! It's just a little much to take in, that's all."

They were quiet for several moments. Elphaba rearranged herself and lay her head on Fiyero's shoulder.

"Yero," she said, finally, "I think we need to find out whether or not Liir is our son."

"So do I," said Fiyero. Elphaba thought he appeared to be taking the deaths of his family remarkably well; but then again he had been separated from them for fifteen years and had more than likely resigned himself to never seeing them again. And Elphaba knew better than most that the way different people dealt with grief was different. Most, for example, did _not _slather themselves in blood and then fall into a coma for year, then lose all sense of self for seven more years. Most people were more efficient, or at least less all-consumed, in their dealings with grief than that.

Frex, for example, had lost two loves within five years of each other. And he had managed to be a better father than Elphaba was a mother, even to the child whose parentage he was unsure of, even to the child he didn't like (and whose parentage he _should _have questioned).

"But who would know whether or not you gave birth to Liir?" asked Fiyero.

"The maunts at the mauntery of St. Glinda, here in the city," she said. "They knew Liir's age, they sent him with me to the outpost mauntery. They assigned me to care for him before that- they _must _know."

"So let's find out," said Fiyero.

…

The pair woke Liir and Nor in the morning.

"Did you two have fun last night?" asked Liir snarkily. He was in a bad mood from having slept on the floor. Elphaba glared at him.

"I hate to repeat myself, but it's too early to be witty, so shut up, you useless boy, or I'll remove your testicles with my foot!"

"You've used that three times," observed Liir.

"Oh, go jump in a fishwell!" snapped Elphaba.

Nor snorted.

"I don't get it," said Fiyero.

"We're going to go…buy some more blankets," said Elphaba. "And food. Liir, stay here with Nor."

"Fine," said Liir.

…

"We'd like to see the head maunt here," said Fiyero brashly. The young novice looked from the green woman to the Arjiki man warily.

"I don't know-"

"Let them in, Sister Asile," said the Mother Maunt, coming regally down the stairs. "I know this one."

…

"I remember you very well, Sister Saint Aelphaba," said the older woman, pouring them tea in her office. "Miss Elphaba, is it now?"

Elphaba nodded, somewhat subdued by the familiar environment.

"You came to us bloody from wounds not your own on a Lurlinemas Eve, practically sleepwalking, not to mention half-dead despite that you were physically in perfect health," the maunt went on.

"Yes," said Elphaba, shifting in her seat, obviously uncomfortable. "But what I was- that is, what we were- that is- what we were wondering," she finally managed, having some difficulty speaking, "is- did I bear a child?"

"Oh," said Mother Maunt, considerably less than shocked, "I was wondering when that question would come to be asked." She sighed. "Yes, indeed you did, Miss Elphaba. A boy. We called him Liir."

"But why did you never tell me?"

"But we did, Miss Elphaba. We did."

"_What_!" Elphaba reeled back in her chair, stunned.

"You refused to acknowledge it. Over and over again, after you came out of your coma, whenever we mentioned your relationship to Liir, or what had happened to send you here, or especially who the boy's father was- you would keep saying, 'No, no, I'm not a woman, I'm not a person, no, no, it's all my fault,' and then you would get hysterical and have to be knocked out with one of Mother Yackle's concoctions."

Elphaba looked shocked. "But I don't-"

"You don't remember it? That's what Mother Yackle said would happen, from that and the other concoction she gave you."

"Other…concoction?"

"Yes. You also had terrible nights, my dear child, shakes and sweats and delirium, and you refused to be touched. Mother Yackle, crazy as she was, insisted she be allowed to give you a remedy, and she did. But the two together made you forget."

…

Liir and Nor stared at each other for a while.

"So," said Liir at last, "What- I mean, what happened?"

"Oh," sighed Nor. "You were asleep, weren't you, when I explained it."

"Yes."

"Well then," she groaned, "all right."

"When I was captured," she began, "they brought us to the Wizard. Mama and the others were taken away, but the Wizard kept me with him. He called me an 'insurance policy,' I guess he meant against Auntie Witch, but I didn't know that then. He told me that my family was safe and busy, and they had to help investigate my father's death, and that Irji had to go to boys' school. I believed him. And then, later, he…" she trailed off. "I don't remember much. I didn't spend much time in my head, you know what I mean?"

"Yes," said Liir, even though he didn't.

"So," said Nor, "Auntie Witch and Papa. Are you…?"

"I don't know!" said Liir. "I wish people would quit asking me that."

"I think you _are_ their child. I think you should be. The magical love child of-"

"You are _so_ strange," said Liir, laughing.

"Oh really? Well-"

But Nor was interrupted by the sound of knocking on the skylight. Liir locked up and saw a face peering down at him.

"Cass!" he cried.

…

Outside the mauntery, Elphaba enveloped Fiyero in a long kiss.

"Whoa, Fae," he said. "What was that for? Not that I'm complaining."

"I never really told you how much I missed you," she said. "I had a nervous breakdown, that should tell you something. But also-" she paused. "Once I was myself again, at Kiamo Ko, that empty space next to me at night was full of the worst pain imaginable. I would wake up with the bittersweet taste of your name on my lips, my arms full of air. I swore I could smell you. If I ever dreamed, it was then, of you."

"Oh, Fae," he said. She was crying now, and trying not to, and wiping her eyes ferociously. He thought it must be being here again, where she had tried her best to bury the pain of his 'death' by burying her own self, that had forced these emotions out of her. That and maybe she really was pregnant.

"Well, that's as close as I'll get to being nostalgic," she said, trying weakly to return to the shelter of her sarcasm. He held her tightly.

"Oh, Elphaba," he murmured. "I love you, I really do, I know I do."


	20. Alone in the House

**A/N: Hey! So that wasn't too long, right? –tomatoes are thrown at head- Okay, okay, so it was. Fine. But here's another update. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Cass unlatched the skylight's clasp neatly and lithely swung inside, managing to land on the mattress, where she fell into an unhurt heap.

"I don't think you want to lay there too long," said Liir.

"_I _slept there last night, are you insulting me?" Nor asked. Liir cocked an eyebrow, and for a moment Nor and even Cass had no doubts as to the identity of his mother. But then he lowered it and the moment passed.

"No, I just think…I maybe might have been conceived on that mattress," Liir said offhandedly.

"Don't be gross," said Nor. "That's disturbing."

"No, it's the miracle of life," Cass said, giggling as she sprung off the mattress and onto her feet.

"It's not _your _father," Nor pointed out, shuddering. "_Really_. Could you _be _more insensitive, Liir?"

"I'm sorry my- Elphaba had an affair with your father before I was born? I'm sorry I exist?" Liir tried jokingly.

"Better," said Nor.

"Wait- what?" asked Cass. "What happened?"

"Cass, you're not the one owed an explanation here," said Liir. He folded his arms and tried to look intimidating. He failed rather badly, but neither Nor nor Cass had the heart to laugh at him.

"You really want to know?" Cass asked after a long moment. Liir and Nor nodded simultaneously, for another brief moment looking somewhat like siblings in the set of their faces and in their stance. Cass took a deep breath before beginning. But just as the first word left her mouth, the door opened and Elphaba and Fiyero entered.

"Liir, we have something to tell you," Elphaba said without prelude as she opened the door. But the moment she saw Cass, her mouth rounded into an expression of shock and the bags of food and necessities (they actually _had _bought some) tumbled to the floor.

"What the _hell _are you doing here?" exclaimed Elphaba. Cass looked at her guiltily.

"She was just about to explain that," Liir told Elphaba. "What did you want to tell me?"

"We got some food, by the way you're our son. Now what is _she _doing here?"

Liir gaped at Elphaba. "I'm- I'm- I _am_?"

"Unless she was having sex with someone else on the side, you are," said Fiyero, who had been watching reticently from the doorway.

Elphaba slapped him, but not hard. She whirled on her heel to face Cass.

"Now. You explain exactly who you are and what the hell it is you want from us," she demanded abruptly.


	21. Cass

**A/N: Aren't I a good girl, another update so soon? More tomatoes. O-kay. Well then. I've invented some words in this chapter, but hey- unlike a certain ruler of the free world, I _know _they're made up. I did it on purpose. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Cass took a deep breath and began.

"I was a spy for the Wizard," she started. Elphaba flared, if a human could be described as flaring, but that's what it was. She seemed to grow taller and simultaneously to hunch over, but loomingly so; she clenched her long elegant hands into claws and her hazel eyes flashed murder; her nose and chin seemed to lengthen and grow sharper, definitively serrating her face. She looked like a harpy or a Fury; the definition of a Wicked Witch, the green avenging angel of justice, as Avaric had said.

"I knew it!" she cried, her voice high and strange. "I knew it! Oh, oh, now; whatever to do with _you_, my pretty!"

Cass was petrified and Nor frightened by this transformation, but Liir had seen it before and Fiyero had seen his Fae turn vengeful and strange in mere moments before, too.

"Fae, let her speak, give her a chance, she can't hurt us," said Fiyero softly, laying a soothing blue-diamonded hand on Elphaba's arm and, as she seemed visibly to shrink and go from mythological Fury to woman again, he pulled her gently, calmingly, into a half embrace. He turned then to Cass. "Well, go on then," he told her, not unkindly. "How did a girl so young end up working for the Wizard as a spy?"

"Oh, well," she said. "My great-aunt is Madame Morrible, and she is the one who raised me. My grandparents died before I was born, and my parents when I was eight." She turned her silvery gaze on Elphaba, imploring with her eyes rather than her voice, which remained calm and steady. "I was raised in the South, just north of Quadling Country," she said. Elphaba's breath caught in her throat and she reeled back, echoes of a long-ago conversation overwhelming her. _The Adept. _ Of course, the perfect pawn for Morrible's devious schemes and power plays; her own flesh and blood. Not that they ever would have guessed it; Cassia seemed the opposite of her overbearing erstwhile guardian. Cass was nearly ethereal; she was slight, slender and compact, with that light, flyaway, fine red hair and those pale grey eyes. Her voice, too, was light and airy; not like Glinda's but like spring rain, a counterpoint to Morrible's rumbling thunderclouds.

"But I don't want to be a spy anymore," Cass said pleadingly, still staring at Elphaba. The girl held out her hands almost submissively, but the look in her eyes had changed to one of unadulterated defiance. "I haven't been _spying _on you since you left Glinda's house," she explained. "I've been following you because I wanted to help you, to- to join you."

Liir looked at Elphaba- his mother-, to gauge her reaction. Her eyes were hooded, unreadable, the set of her face defensive.

"Why should we believe you?" asked Elphaba. Cass's voice and eyes betrayed her growing panic.

"Because," she supplicated, spreading her hands wider, "I was only eight when my parents died, and I never knew anything but Aunt Morrible's doctrines. But now," she went on desperately, "now I remember, I realize- my parents didn't believe in this. They tried to _help _the Animals, they hated my aunt- and I don't want them to hate me, too!"

Something had broken in Elphaba as she listened to the young girl's story, so similar to her own.

"All right," she said at last, "you can stay."


	22. Remember

**A/N: This whole thing is just a dream of Elphaba's; you'll see her reaction when she awakes next chapter. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

_She was supposed to remember something important…_

_There was something, something…_

_Blurred impressions were all that would come to her, and only at night. But not in her dreams, for she didn't dream. How could she; she didn't even sleep. She lay awake all night in her little cell in the mauntery. It was warm, at least, and there was a bed, a comfortable one. But she would trade it all for the cold and the thin mattress of…before. She hadn't been alone there. The world was pressing in on her, and she felt about to burst into sobs, but laying there, she could only think, and let herself remember, barely: _

_Snow, like the snow falling now, a year later, outside. Grey sludge on the streets. Cold metal in thick cloth…blood, blood all over her…And then it was like there was a fence around her memories, pushing her back, and within was locked something evil and dark and unnameable, something that would break her with its terribleness. So she didn't, shouldn't, wouldn't try to open it. For deep down, she knew. _

_But there was something else she was supposed to remember…not from That Night, but from earlier. That morning. _

_(And now, now in this dream, years later, she finally did remember)_

She had slipped out and gone to the old crone down several streets, in the Lower Quarter of the city, to ask her.

The little enclave stank of cat urine mingled with incense, and was oppressive with its many dark tapestries and blankets decorating the walls. The old woman introduced herself as Yackle and went on to speak of herself in the third person, which was more than a bit annoying, but there was nothing to be done. Elphaba _had _to know.

The old woman led her behind a purple curtain and into an alcove even more heavily stinking of incense, and sat her down on a velvety stool, before a table upon which stood a crystal ball, not at all unlike Elphaba's own magic glass. Yet she was sure this one was fake, just as was its user.

Ordinarily, Elphaba would gave laughed out loud at the p-faith, faux mystical air of the room. But something stopped her laughter dead in her throat. Perhaps it wasn't so 'faux' after all.

"So, my dearie, what is it that you need to know?" asked Yackle.

Elphaba swallowed hard. She had to say it, even if the old woman already seemed to have guessed, judging from how and where she was looking at Elphaba.

"I-I need," Elphaba choked out, "I need to know if I'm pregnant."

The old crone regarded the general area of the young woman's stomach with a frown. She consulted the crystal ball in front of her and frowned again, making a clucking noise with her tongue.

Elphaba wondered if this had been a mistake. How could she trust the old woman's results, anyway? Her father had probably been right all those years ago; it was all showbiz anyway. She wouldn't be surprised if there was a puff of smoke and her mother's "spirit" appeared to tell her she was pregnant sometime soon.

The crone rummaged through some books, regarded one intently, and nodded hard at it. She poked through several drawers before handing Elphaba a small sachet of herbs.

"Spit in it," she instructed.

"Do _what_?" asked Elphaba in disbelief.

"Spit in it, dearie," repeated the old woman. Elphaba hesitated. "Do what Yackle says," the woman crooned, "it is your destiny."

Elphaba was past ready to bolt. "_What _is?" she asked.

"Just spit in the herbs, child!" cried Yackle. Rolling her eyes, Elphaba obeyed. Once she had, Yackle took the small pouch from her, shook it, added a drop of liquid from a vial hidden in her sleeve, shook it again, examined it, poured it into a bowl of water and stirred it, examined it again, and smiled oddly.

"What?" demanded Elphaba, drawn in despite herself. "What is it?"

The woman smiled again, wider. "It will be a boy," she said, grinning evilly and exposing a missing tooth, "and forever, you will be unsure."

"Unsure of what?" asked Elphaba, ignoring the bigger news. She would deal with it later, after tonight, after she completed her mission. She couldn't even _process _it now.

"_Him_," answered the woman, peering at her crystal ball again. "Your son, but you will not be sure of that."

"How is that possible? I'll _give birth _to him, won't I?" asked Elphaba, already wondering if she could or should get rid of it. _Could _she have a child? Was it _safe_? What about Fiyero? They existed in limbo right now; a netherworld, a time and place that weren't anchored or perhaps even really there at all. A child would change that, force them to deal with what they were doing.

"Yes, you will be unsure, you will not remember," crooned the crone to her crystal ball. Then, abruptly, she frowned. "Unless," she murmured, still staring at the ball.

Elphaba half-believed this was all the truth by now.

"Unless what?" she asked.

"Nothing, nothing," replied Yackle hastily. "Go on now, poppet. Go on to do what must be done."

A shocked expression came over Elphaba's features.

"How do you-"

"Yackle knows all, dearie, but be calmed: all she knows, but all she does not tell."

Elphaba massaged her temples for a moment, trying to clear her head. She pushed what she had learned to the back of her mind and tried to focus on the task at hand.

"How- how much do I owe you?" she asked, standing up and following Yackle back to the front of the little shop.

"Nothing, dear, nothing. No, really, nothing. Go on now, you have work to do, you mustn't fret, child, it's nothing. Pay me nothing."

Yackle watched the green woman- not much more than a girl really, and carrying the weight of all Oz on her thin shoulders- disappear, cloaked, into the falling snow.

"No, pay me nothing now, poppet," she muttered, "for you will pay later. Oh, how you will pay."


	23. Something Right

**A/N: I don't know what to say. Um…Ann Coulter's on crack? Yeah, sounds good. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Elphaba woke up in a stinging sweat. She looked around the little room in momentary confusion, seeing the sleeping Fiyero beside her, panicking slightly in an all-too familiar feeling of forgetfulness until she spotted Liir, Nor, and Cass curled up in their respective corners and the past fifteen years of her life came flooding back. _All _of it. It was as if a floodgate had opened in her mind and everything repressed, magically or otherwise, came out and hit her all at once.

Ironically, all those memories she hadn't had access to before now blocked her from the realization she had begun to form as they hit her.

It was a simple thought, just one word, but she couldn't find it. She was too busy with this new rush of memories, too busy redefining the boundaries of her world and even her mind by what she found.

_"Miss? Are you awake?" asked the young maunt cautiously, walking fearfully into the room where Elphaba had spent most of the last year. Elphaba blinked rapidly, the unfamiliar room around her coming into focus. _

_"Fiyero? Where's Fiyero? Where am I? What happened?" she cried, sitting up too rapidly and falling back as a wave of dizziness hit her. _

_An older woman, Mother Maunt, came into the room to relieve the frightened, speechless young novice. _

_"Thank you, Sister Wendela. I will speak with our patient now." The young woman departed quickly and Mother Maunt perched in the chair beside Elphaba's bed. _

_"Who are you? What's going on?" Elphaba demanded. "The last thing I remember is…" _

_The young woman closed her eyes and tried to recall, but a wave of intense pain pushed her probing thoughts away. She fell back against the pillow again. "Wha- what happened?" she asked quietly. _

_"You are in the mauntery of Saint Glinda. You came to us just over a year ago," the older woman told her calmly. _

_"A year? But…"_

_"Yes, a year. You fell into a coma just after you arrived. You had blood on your wrists, but it wasn't yours. There was, physically, absolutely nothing wrong with you." The woman paused to allow Elphaba to absorb this. "Then, a few months after you arrived, it became undeniable that you were…pregnant. Three months ago, you had a son. We called him Liir. He…isn't green, he has dark hair and blue eyes. He seems intelligent, he's proceeding normally. Would you like to see him?" _

_The older woman had continued to speak, oblivious to Elphaba's growing horror and the absolute shutdown of her emotions. She began to rock back and forth. _

_"No, no, no, no, no, I'm not a woman, I'm not a person, no, no, I did it, it's my fault, no!" _

It was all there, that and a dozen other memories like it. And then the thought that had kept escaping her finally pushed its way through.

_How can you remember this now? _

_Well, who made you forget in the first place? _

_Yackle. _

Elphaba pulled herself out of bed, changed quietly, brushed her hair, cleaned up, and then sat down at the table with her head in her hands to think. But she was startled out of her reverie by the sight of- Oh, Kumbricia, her son- sitting up among his blankets, staring at her.

"Liir," she said, looking back at him. His eyes were like mirrors, and she realized she knew nothing about him, had no insight into him.

"Auntie Witch…Elphaba…" he said slowly, standing. "I-I don't know what to call you."

She laughed nervously; this boy alone had the capacity to perpetually unsettle her and make her doubt herself and her abilities.

"I don't know either," she said. She looked at him again; he stepped closer. "I'm sorry, Liir," she told him quietly. "I'm sorry I wasn't- I didn't-" she dropped her head back into her hands. "It's no excuse, but I didn't know how to be a mother, especially when I didn't know I was one, not for sure, not when I came into it seven years late and still uncertain. My mother…but it doesn't matter," she added. "I'm sorry, and I don't say that a lot, so take it, all right?"

"All right…Mom," Liir said, smiling at her. Elphaba smiled back, feeling a warm band radiate around her abdomen and the baby within. Maybe, just maybe, she could fix Liir. Maybe, just maybe, she could do this of all things right.


	24. Have I Paid?

**A/N: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Long time, no write. Whatever. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

With her newfound memories, Elphaba was more scared and confused than before.

"You will pay later," Yackle had said. "Oh, how you will pay."

Hadn't she paid enough? Wasn't she finished? Hadn't she endured enough punishment yet?

She'd lost her lover- but she'd reclaimed him, shattered though they both were. She'd been murdered, but she wasn't dead. And now, now, she had more than ever before: a home, a love, a son, a stepdaughter, a best friend, and a- whatever the hell Cass was.

_Had _she been punished enough?

From the age of not-quite-three, death had stalked her. Turtle Heart. All those Quadlings, dead for no reason at all other than pure and simple greed. Dr. Dillamond. Ama Clutch. Several of her comrades- they and those they had killed. Fiyero. The cook, if he counted. Manek. Irji. Sarima and her sisters. Morrible, whatever Elphaba's own role in it had truly been. Nessarose. Killyjoy, him too, and all his brethren. The crows. The bees. Finally, herself.

Then Death had taken his leave of her, or added it all up and decided she'd come up short.

First, she herself, awakening bruised and burned in a hateful prison cell. Then Liir, who though he had never been dead she had thought him gone from her forever, had been returned to her, then Fiyero, most miraculously. She'd been granted Glinda in her life again; then they'd found Nor, disappeared and likely dead too.

But she hadn't been. Against all odds, none of them were. The old corn exchange was even bereft of squatters, unusual in the still poverty-ridden City of Fake Emeralds. The city glittered, but a precious gem it was not.

_Had _she endured enough?

_Have you paid yet, my poppet? _

Yes, yes she had, damn it! Neither Yackle nor Fate nor anything else could begrudge her her small happiness. She had _earned _it through thirty-eight years of loss and hate and hardship. Couldn't she just have this now? Love, children, friendship. It wasn't so much to ask for. Most her age had had it for twenty years more than she. She was _owed _it, by Lurline or the Unnamed God or Kumbricia or Fate or the universe. Or…herself.

Her childhood, spent neglected in service to a cause in which she did not believe and to her sister. Her college days, still among her happiest but even then Morrible had tried to recruit her to yet another cause she despised. And then her own cause, the one that consumed her whole for far too long. Her Fiyero, who consumed her body for far too short a time and her heart forever. A year in a coma, seven in denial and dissociation. Her pilgrimage for forgiveness. Then her quest to find Sarima and her family. The knowledge that the man she hated most, the cause of all her miseries, the _Wonderful Fucking Wizard_, was her _father_. Nessa's death, the farm brat, the shoes. Those damned shoes. She wondered vaguely where they were now, and why she had wanted them so much. Her nervous breakdown, so long in coming, her "death."

She had. She had paid more than anyone should have to, and why? For her green skin? Her conscience, which the rest of Oz seemed to lack?

WHAT MORE DID SHE OWE THE WORLD?

What had she done to deserve all of this?

For how long was she doomed to pay?

…

Elphaba sat unmoving at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, thoughts still racing. She started at the touch of Fiyero's hand on her shoulder.

"Good morning," he said.

She lifted her head. "Morning," she answered, the sound of her own voice in actual reality, outside the confines of her own head, seeming almost surreal.

"What's wrong, Fae?" Fiyero asked

She looked up into his face. She hadn't realized she had become easy to read, even to him who had known her better and more intimately than anyone, and during some of the years she was at her most obscure. But still…

"How can you tell?" she asked sharply.

"Tell what?"

Liir was looking at them again; but she didn't know how to talk to him since their odd little moment earlier and so she hadn't spoken to him at all.

"How can you tell something's wrong?" she went on, turning back to Fiyero.

"I know you, Elphaba. There is nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with familiarity, with intimacy."

She relaxed slightly, tenseness seeping out of her. "I guess."

"You _know_. You know that you know. Now what's wrong?"

"I remembered something." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Liir grow more alert. Cass and Nor slumbered on, oblivious.

"You did?"

"From the morning…before." She looked up at him again. "I knew, Fiyero. I knew I was pregnant that morning."

"What?" asked Fiyero, shocked. "Then how-"

"I didn't process it!" she cried defensively, shooting up from her seat. He calmed her with a hand on her arm and gave her a bemused look. She started breathing normally again and continued. "I refused to acknowledge it. I thought I could deal with it…after." She ducked her head and went on.

"I couldn't remember it because I repressed everything that had to do with you. I didn't realize I'd given birth because it would have brought everything back and I couldn't face it," she continued in the same quiet unemotional tone. "I couldn't deal with losing you. I never came to terms with it." Rich sorrow poured like soft fine earth back into her voice. "I couldn't deal with it because I _love _you more than anything, and I'm so afraid of it." Leaving him with her revelation, as she so often did, she turned to Liir.

"I know you thought I loved Chistery more than you, Liir, but I didn't. Chistery, Killyjoy, all the animals- they were _safe_ outlets for my affection. I _knew_ you were my son, but I couldn't allow myself that knowledge. I couldn't love you because-" her voice broke painfully, gravid with unspeakable sadness- "if I loved you, Liir, I would have to realize that Fiyero was dead!"

Liir couldn't speak. He had never seen her open up like this. He had never seen such horrible pain, either. Fiyero himself could remember only one other time she had been even remotely like this- in her little room, the first time they met after Shiz, after he told her about his family and she blurted that she was married, but not to a man, and inexplicably began to cry.

"Oh, Elphaba-Fabala-Elphie-Fae," he said now, almost crying himself, and as she turned back to face him he buried her in his arms. After a long moment, simultaneously, the two opened their arms and looked at Liir. Slowly, unbelievingly, he stood and walked toward them. When he reached them, they folded him into their embrace, and he felt years of unbestowed love as poignant as Elphaba's pent-up sorrow wash over him, and he stood awash in it, finally belonging.


	25. Elphaba the Soulless?

**A/N: I like words. _Wicked_ is my vade mecum. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Once everyone had woken up, Elphaba had managed to work herself into a rage, inveighing loudly against Yackle.

"Ooh, that woman! She thinks it's her right just to play around in my head? I may not know what the hell she is, but woman, devil, or angel, it won't stop me from defenestrating her!"

"I don't think you can do that to a girl," said Liir. Elphaba gave him the look.

"It means 'to throw out a window,' Liir. Get your mind out of the gutter!"

"But you always-" Liir tried to protest.

"But this time I didn't," Elphaba cut him off. "Learn this- don't make assumptions, not even based on previous patterns." She started pacing again and went on with the same tone of utter acrimony. "She's execrable, evil, detestable, esurient for all my happiness! Whether she be supernal or diabolical, I _will _have the best of her! I _will_!"

Fiyero crossed the room to her side quietly.

"I think you already have," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, whirling in a flurry of dark skirts and loosened hair to face him.

"You're supposed to be dead, Elphaba, and so am I, but we're not. We're back here, together, again, with Liir and Nor, and you've met Glinda again and she's helped you, and I get the distinct feeling we've cheated destiny. _This was not supposed to happen._"

"I don't believe in destiny, Fiyero. There is nothing written in the stars that we don't write ourselves."

"You still don't believe in divine beings and souls, Elphaba? Then where the hell is Yackle from?"

She quieted. "I…don't know."

"You yourself called her supernal, Elphaba, _celestial_. Angel or devil, you said. _She's not an earthly being. _So tell me, Elphaba the Soulless, what is she then?"

The title sent a shiver running down her spine. Fiyero noticed its affect and amended it. "The self-proclaimed soulless, Elphaba. I don't think you're soulless, you know that."

"Words are words," she murmured quietly, "and what's said is said. I don't know if I have a soul or not, now, I don't know what Yackle is, I don't know what she wants. I _don't know_," she told Fiyero quietly, oblivious to the three adolescents trying rather desperately not to look at them, "and that frightens me more than anything ever has in my life." Elphaba whirled on the teenagers behind her, suddenly, undaunted by the gravity of her admission. "Nor, Cass," she said in her ordinary voice, as if they had not just heard her voice her fears and discuss the state of her soul, "go-" she waved her hand distractedly, "Go, go do something useful, just _go_. Liir…" she sighed long and hard, as if making a decision. "Come with us, then, I suppose this concerns you." She turned on her heel and stalked out the door. Liir looked to Fiyero- to his father- for any hint as to what he was doing, but Fiyero just shrugged. Elphaba stuck her head back in the door, her hair hastily plaited now.

"Well?" she asked, eyes blazing. "Are you coming, or would you prefer we do this another time? A week before next Lurlinemas good for you?"

"If I knew _what _we were doing, I could tell you that," said Fiyero, following her out the door again. Liir trailed after them reluctantly, wishing he could stay with Nor and Cass. He wanted to think about Elphaba and all that had happened lately, and it felt more than faintly blasphemous to mentally speculate about her while she was right there. Especially since, Elphaba being Elphaba, it was not entirely farfetched to wonder if perhaps she could not hear his thoughts after all.


	26. To Defy the Universe

**A/N: Don't blame me. Blame AP Euro, and my teacher who marked off my essay for my usage of "big words." (Veracity and reprehensibility. Those aren't even THAT BIG! And since when is a good vocabulary a BAD thing? And it's not as if I didn't know what they meant. Just because he didn't doesn't mean I should get in trouble!) And yes, I have borrowed something from Star Wars. Cookies to whoever can tell me what. And what's this about the _name _of Elphaba from? Hm…who can tell me that? Cake, ice cream, and a _broomstick _ for you if you can. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

His parents walked _fast_. Liir tried desperately to keep up, not wanting Elphaba to glare at him for slowing them down. Fiyero, actually, was behind Elphaba, too, but at her heels, and trying relentlessly to get her to tell him where they were going, which needless to say was somewhat less than amusing to her, although her own thoughts on the matter did seem to entertain her.

"Fiyero, you have only ever succeeded in getting me to tell you something I didn't want to _once_, and you can hardly employ the same methods here."

"Watch me," he replied, grinning.

She was caught in very human indecision for a moment- she could laugh at him, or grow angry. She stood there, and then suddenly began to laugh, too hard, heightening into a cackle, hysterical.

"Fae? Elphaba?" asked Fiyero concernedly, pulling her shaking frame towards him. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she gasped for breath as she managed to get her hysteria under control. "I'm all right. I think I'm _finally _all right." She turned her face to the sky for a moment, and then kissed Fiyero, hard and deep and full.

Liir watched his parents' deepening kiss and felt some unnameable longing well up in his chest. Unsure of what it meant, he pushed it aside and thought about his parents again.

It was hard, processing this all at once. Elphaba was his mother (Elphaba was _a _mother!); he had a father, Nor was in effect his sister. Though of course he had often been suspicious that this exact thing was true, knowing it for certain put his childhood into a whole new light.

He could nearly forgive Elphaba her sometimes icy, sometimes merely inept, inattentiveness. He could see his parents' love for each other- _more _than see; it was a palpable _force _running constantly between the pair.

What Fiyero's "death" must have done to her…it was unspeakable. Already Kiamo Ko and his whole life seemed like a fading dream in light of the vivacious unrelenting _life _of Elphaba and Fiyero. Already, he could not imagine one of his parents without the other somewhere near. In his dim-lit memories, Elphaba alone, in all her intensity burning into madness, seemed faded and dull compared to the woman standing here now, kissing the man that seemed to be almost literally her other half.

But now their kiss was over, and Elphaba was looking at him.

"Liir," she said impatiently, "Are you going to stare vacantly at that lamppost all day? Come _on_."

Liir groaned quietly and obeyed. His mother looked like a bloodhound, nose forward, eyes wide, sniffing and intense as if she were privy to some hidden, underlying answer in the air.

"This way," she said definitively, and turned a corner.

Fiyero knew she was not actually following a scent. She was _remembering_. She had, somewhere deep and buried, the imprinted memory of each step she had taken that fateful day, including the steps to Yackle's fortune-telling shop.

"Here," she said, leading them down several more winding alleys and finally to an unremarkable door in a derelict building, grey, unkempt, weathered, and tumbledown like all its fellows.

Hesitantly, unsure of what she would find, Elphaba knocked on the door several times. A old crone answered with surprising speed. Elphaba drew back in shock.

"Yackle! No. You're not here. You're at the mauntery. How…what…"

"Not anymore, my poppet. Yackle is where she needs to be, when she needs to be."

Elphaba shivered at the 'endearment.' _My poppet_. Could it be true? Could _Yackle's _be the plot she had felt enthralled in?

"Why- who- _what_ are you?" asked Elphaba, stumbling over her words as she never had in her life.

"Come inside, dearies," said Yackle. "All of you."

They obeyed, as if all three of them were in a trance.

The interior was exactly as Elphaba had dream-remembered. The same wall hangings disguised the walls and made the place anathema to claustrophobics, the same awful mingling of smells permeated the air.

Yackle led them back to the same room, behind the tapestry. Elphaba had not noticed before that the tapestry was a depiction of Saint Aelphaba disappearing behind the waterfall. _Even if the water itself didn't kill her, all those tons of it pressing down upon her should have_, Elphaba thought. She wasn't sure what it meant to her, to think this.

Yackle bade them all to sit down. Regaining herself, Elphaba remained standing, her face set defiantly, so Fiyero and Liir quickly pulled themselves up out of their seats, Liir with some regret. He wasn't used to walking so far, and his legs ached, but he didn't dare complain. He wasn't sure whom he was more afraid of: Elphaba, Yackle, or the volatile combination of the two in the same room.

"Now," said Yackle as if there was nothing between them, "what would you like to know?" She placed her wrinkled hands over the crystal ball and waggled long, decrepit fingers.

"Cut that _shit _out, right now!" demanded Elphaba hoarsely, in a voice that made Liir unsure as to whether she was going to cry or yell in frustration. "I'm more a witch than you are. What I want to know is _what _you are and _why _I am cursed with you!"

"Calm down, dear child. You have come so far. _Too _far. Mother Yackle is mystified, so Mother Yackle will tell you what she can, in hopes that the poppet can help her decipher what went wrong."

_You're no Mother, _thought Elphaba, but she said, "Too far? Wrong? I don't understand…" Her voice had calmed, but her stance remained tense and dangerous. Fiyero recognized the mixture of anger, stress, and purpose. She was Fae down to her very eyelashes right now.

"That's what Yackle's going to _tell _you, poppet," the crone said. "Now sit down." Horrified, Elphaba found herself obeying, as did Fiyero and Liir. She was reminded, strongly, terrifyingly, of the interview in Morrible's office. But this spell or influence or whatever it was was obviously stronger, or her age and lack of rebellious idealism over the last fifteen years had weakened her, for she found herself unable to make even the small movement of her foot that she had been able to in Madame Morrible's interview. She couldn't even change the expression on her face.

All she could do was sit in mute horror as Yackle continued.

"All right, poppet. Now that you're quiet, Yackle will tell you her tale.

"Yackle cannot tell you what she is, only that she watches over you and ascertains that the punishments you were assigned are carried out."

_Punishments? _Elphaba's mind screamed. _But what have I done? _

"You, poppet, had not done anything," said Yackle. "It was Melena and Frex."

_The tables of guilt are turned_, thought Elphaba, not without a guilty satisfaction.

"You were born with your skin and teeth as physical manifestations of your great power, which itself came from your dual nature," Yackle went on. "Saint and sinner, you are, a child of both worlds, worlds never intended to be unified, especially not with all the power of the reaction of their combination held in the form of a single small child.

"Your own nature set you apart from the beginning, and your power- not your mother's words, as Frex thought- did open a window of sorts in you, but after birth, and the window neither admitted sprite nor stole spirit, but for a brief time merely remained quiescently open, ready.

"When your parents gave you the name Elphaba, after Aelphaba, the window's purpose was revealed. You, Elphaba, were destined from before birth to be the one whose _name _would bring balance to Oz, but neither the forces of good nor the forces of evil _want _that balance, yet both _need _it. Good recognizes and accepts this, but evil, on the other hand…does not. We are not accepting, it is not in the nature of evil to be so."

The _we _sent shivers running down Elphaba's frozen spine.

"Thus, evil tried to punish you, to keep your name from any veneration, ever, and perhaps also to turn you to evil in your desperation as well. Since balance is the centerpoint of both good and evil, what was supposed to be your most extensive punishment and what would bring you down at the end, was the exact counter of your namesake.

"Your allergy to water. Where water protected her, it would harm you. It would deny you the opportunity to reclaim and vindicate your name. That, too, was your curse, Elphaba. You have given up your name for good and for evil, a mixture of both each time. To become Fae, and the Witch.

"But you have not fulfilled your destiny. You were to die. Your lover was to die. Your son was never to know your lineage- the entirety of his name. The child in you now was never to have existed.

"Elphaba Thropp," Yackle shook her head, "Yackle does not know who or what _you _are anymore. You have escaped destiny, and brought these three souls, and those of the young girls, Nor and Cassia, with you." She pointed at Elphaba, her finger as accusing as her eyes. "And now every breath you take, every insignificant thing you do- is an alteration, a defiance, of the very _universe_."


	27. Not Funny

**A/N: Okay, I'm finally updating this- winging it. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

The spell, suddenly, was broken, but the tension in the air was still so thick it was palpable. Fiyero wiped his brow, shocked to find that he had been physically sweating. Shocked at what had been said. Shocked at the oddness of the situation- of his life. How had he, a tribal prince, yes, but an altogether ordinary man, and now he was being told that he and his lover were in violating the order of the universe just by existing. He couldn't help but smile. _Life with Elphaba is never boring_. His companions, however, looked anything but amused.

Liir looked as if he were going to throw up, or pass out, or both. His face looked pasty. Had Fiyero been at Kiamo Ko when Liir was yanked out of the fishwell, he would have been distinctly reminded of that incident now. And Elphaba…Elphaba looked _stricken_, nothing short of stricken. She had a look that was unfortunately familiar, a look that meant she was on the brink of either a- well, a meltdown- or a rehardening of herself, neither of which were good. Yackle simply sat, staring at her, looking self-satisfied.

"So for now, we shall see how it plays out," she finished. Something twisted in Elphaba's features, making her look at once hardened and cold and very, very young. She leapt up in one fluid motion from her seat and dashed out the door, into the damp cold of the day.

She ran through streets and alleys, not back toward the corn exchange, not toward the old Resistance headquarters, nowhere from her former life. Her booted feet struck the slick ground so quickly that they couldn't find or lose traction. She was practically flying. The wind whipped her hair free of its loose chignon and pulled the hood of the cloak from her face. She slowed a bit, and suddenly she was striding, the Wicked Witch of the West in the flesh, green as sin, hair and skirts flying, walking proudly through the streets of the Emerald City as if she ruled the entirety of Oz, as if it was her birthright.

Several people saw her and scurried quickly out of her way. By the time she had cooled down enough to return to the corn exchange, where Fiyero and Liir had roused Nor and Cass into somewhat of a panic, the Gale Force had been alerted and the new leadership of Oz, despite the protests of Lady Glinda, had made finding the imposter of the Witch who had been seen at one of Glinda's own parties and now stalking the streets a top priority.

Elphaba herself was unconcerned with the fact that she'd been spotted.

"Let that damned puppet scarecrow and the rest of them think the Resistance is alive and breathing," she spat. "He tricked me, anyway."

"How do you mean?" asked Liir, who had been there.

"I thought he was Fiyero," she said, "And he wasn't."

"You're being irrational," said the real Fiyero.

"I _am not _irrational!" yelled Elphaba.

"It's not even the same scarecrow," added Liir.

"_This is not the point!_" Elphaba screamed. "_Damn it!_"

Nor and Cass exchanged glances, in the way of teenage girls, and each tried desperately to repress the sudden inexplicable urge to laugh.

"_It's not funny, either!_" Elphaba shrieked at them.

"Sorry," Nor muttered.

"If you think I'm going to walk on eggshells around you because I'm your father's fricking mistress you are sorely mistaken!" Elphaba went on hysterically.

Liir couldn't help himself. He cracked up, as hysterical as his mother.

"What's so funny?" she yelled.

Fiyero, too, good-natured as he was, saw some of the humor in it, and Cass, then even Nor, got caught up in the laughter, leaving Elphaba surrounded by four hysterically laughing people. Needless to say, she did not take this well.

"_IT'S NOT FUNNY!_" she yelled.

"It kind of is," admitted Fiyero.

"Argh!" Elphaba slammed her hand into a wall. "I am not irrational," she repeated quietly. Fiyero pulled himself off the floor and went over to her side, placing his hand on her shoulder.

"Life is irrational," he told her. She hit her hand lightly against the same spot on the wall several times.

"I'm _not_," she insisted.

"I know," said Fiyero.

"I had no sleep, my defenses were breaking," she said.

"I _know_," Fiyero reassured her.

"Oh, sweet Lurline," Elphaba gasped suddenly, breaking away from the wall and Fiyero and burying her head in her hands. "They know, don't they? Someone, someone in the Palace knows where this is. Where we are. We have to go, we have to run-" Elphaba pulled her hair loose and shook it out and paced, back and forth, back and forth, as if she were going to wear a hole in the floor. She looked up desperately.

"But where are we going to go?"


	28. Free of Suspicion

**A/N: Well, it's been awhile. What can I say? School. **

**Well…in regards to other stories, Riverdance and _Practical Magic _have inspired me. As has my book of Celtic myths and legends…in addition to the "children of Lir" legend, Lir was a Celtic sea god! Coincidence? I think not. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

They decided that eventually they should go to Kiamo Ko. The guards who had been there to watch over Elphaba's movements were surely gone now, after her death to the world. And hopefully, almost certainly, the new government believed that it wasn't her but some imposter that had been seen, green and unabashed, throughout the city.

But that journey would be a long one, and it require planning and preparation for them to make it without being recognized. So first, they went once more to the one place where no one would expect to find the Wicked Witch of the West, or any of her associates. They went to the home of Lady Glinda.

…

It was not Glinda this time but her maid who opened the door. They had taken steps for this eventuality. It was Cass alone who stood there, in her charcoal coat, red hair brushed and a sweet smile on her face.

"Hello," she said charmingly, every bit the upper class young socialite she had been raised. "I'm Cassia, the niece of Lady Glinda's former headmistress, Madame Morrible, as you'll recall. Is the good lady in today?"

"Why, yes, she is," the maid said pleasantly. From the bushes, Elphaba, Fiyero, Liir, and Nor imagined what she'd have done had she seen the five of them, for the most part rather bedraggled and worn as people who share too small a living space are, especially when they have so many underlying familial connections and the accompanying baggage. In all likelihood, the maid would have first taken them for beggars and told them rather impolitely to shoo, then would have noticed Elphaba and run from the house screaming "Terrorist!" at the top of her lungs. An old family name and money did wonders in this world, sadly, reflected Elphaba, watching Cass work her own personal brand of magic.

"Lady Glinda?" said the maid, what was her name? Eva, or something like. Something that vaguely reminded Glinda of the scientific name for birds that she'd learned all those years ago at Shiz, in Life Sciences, with Elphaba and Dr. Dillamond, their first year before she decided on sorcery.

"What is it?" Glinda asked rather curtly. Her ladies' book club was here, and they were all listening quite attentively, hoping for drama, in spite of their determined gazes resting on their books.

"There's a young lady here to see you. A Miss Cassia Morrible, I believe she said."

"Morrible? Why, she's not related to my old headmistress, is she? I never thought she had any children."

"I believe she said something about a headmistress of yours, yes, ma'am," said Eva or whatever her name was, without the slightest change in expression or inflection. Sweet Lurline, the woman was so _drab_.

"Well, send her in. We'd all love to meet a relative of Madame Morrible's, wouldn't we, ladies?" Glinda asked. There was a collective murmur of assent. Most of the women had gone to Shiz at some point or another, within a few years of Glinda, though only a few had been in her actual year.

A lovely redheaded girl of about thirteen or fourteen appeared in the doorway, dressed half-casually, as if she was coming from school. She looked nothing like the overbearing Madame Morrible, and for a moment Glinda wondered if the maid had muddled things completely. Then, the girl spoke, and though her voice resembled Morrible's even less than her features did, there was a similar inflection to some of her words. It was enough to convince Glinda.

"Lady Glinda," said the young girl, curtseying. "I- may I please speak to you alone, for a moment? It's very important, it concerns a _friend _of yours-" the girl locked eyes with Glinda on the word 'friend' and nodded slightly, as if to confirm Glinda's assumption that the friend she spoke of was Elphaba. Any of Glinda's other friends, or those who considered themselves her friends, would have come themselves, or, more likely, sent a liveried servant with a dictated message, written down.

"Yes, yes of course. Excuse me for a moment, please, ladies," said Glinda, and gracefully swept ahead of the girl into the hallway, motioning for her to follow. Once they were alone, the girl's tone deepened in intensity and her eyes conveyed her urgency even further.

"Glinda," she said, dropping all pretense of formality and reminding Glinda in that moment more of Elphaba than of their old dragon of a headmistress, "You may have heard that Elphaba's been spotted. We need to get out of the City, but we have to plan our trip to Kiamo Ko, and besides, we don't know if it's wise to go out there just yet. Elphaba, Fiyero, Liir, and Nor-"

"Fiyero's daughter Nor?" Glinda interrupted. "You've found her?" Then: "Sweet Lurline, that must be awkward for Elphaba."

"Not really. Elphaba rejects all social norms, as you'll have noticed. She doesn't find sex or the intricacies of relationships to be any more sensitive than any other topics, for the most part."

Glinda was unsurprised by this. "So," she said, "where are they?"

Cass squirmed slightly. "Well, you see- we had no way to let you know-"

"Cassia. Where are they?"

"Outside."


	29. Waiting

**A/N: Okay, this story's turn for an update. Yay!**

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Glinda bit her lip and stared at the girl in front of her.

"Damn it!" she cursed, uncharacteristically, under her breath. "Outside?" she clarified. Cass nodded. "Damn." She forced the smile back to her lips and lowered her voice even further. "Go down that hallway," she murmured, "turn left. You'll find the back door. Unlock it. Come back to the living room, say a polite goodbye, go out the front door, go get them, bring them up through the back and run upstairs. Clear?"

Cass nodded and ran off to obey. Glinda waited until the girl returned, then the pair walked calmly back into her book group and Cass excused herself charmingly. Listening hard even as she spoke banally about the author's flowery prose, Glinda heard, a few moments later, the opening of a door and the sound of feet running quietly up stairs. She breathed a silent sigh of relief and darted a glance at the clock.

…

Fiyero and Elphaba had evidently started an argument while the other four had been waiting, Cass discovered once all five were upstairs, awaiting Glinda in a guest bedroom.

"I can do whatever I choose, Fiyero, no matter what the circumstances," Elphaba hissed haughtily.

"You can_not_," Fiyero whispered firmly, "travel miles across the desert without guarantees of consistent food or water, bumping over stones, crossing _mountains _for Lurlina's sake, and through hostile territory no less, when you're pregnant!"

Elphaba made a rude gesture. Fiyero groaned and buried his head in his hands.

"I can and I will do whatever I want, and that's what I want, so that's what I'm doing," Elphaba announced.

"No, you can't!" said Fiyero, exasperated.

"_Yes_, I can!" she insisted. "I have the capability to do so, and the will, so I can. And besides, it's not hostile territory."

Fiyero made an odd, half-snorting sort of noise.

"Not to me," Elphaba went on, ignoring him. "Maybe to certain _idiots _who keep running around with certain _weapons_-"

"Oh, that's rich!"

"What is _that _supposed to mean?!"

"_I _run around with weapons? What about you?"

"Hardly the same-"

"How is it different?"

"Refusing to resolve ancestral feuds that are merely bloody and serve no purpose is different than working for a regime change when one lives under a corrupt, oppressive, dictatorship!"

"Not that different! And besides, I'm not actively engaged in a war with any of those tribes."

"And does it look like I've got the former government officials, many of whom are still in power, lined up against the wall right now?"

"What are they even arguing about?" asked Cass.

"I don't know," said Liir. "I forgot."

"Whether we can go to the Vinkus while she's pregnant," supplied Nor.

"Oh, right," said Liir.

"And do you know what else?" Elphaba asked, a triumphant look on her face.

"No, but I'm sure you do, since you know everything," Fiyero commented snarkily.

"Would you rather make the journey with a sobbing, equally vulnerable, shitting infant or a quiet, odorless, slightly less vulnerable considering the fact that I can fight without stopping to ensure that it is in a safe place fetus?"

Fiyero sighed.

"It's not a question of what I'd rather do," he said. "I don't want you to give birth in the middle of the journey, either."

"Damn it!" Elphaba threw up her hands and muttered under her breath.

"What did you say?" asked Fiyero.

"My kingdom for a knitting needle," she snarled, and stormed out.

"What does that mean?" Fiyero asked the teenagers. Liir and Nor shrugged. Cass looked uncomfortable.

"What is it?" asked Fiyero.

"She meant a knitting needle to, you know, to stick….you know…to, um, get rid of it," Cass explained uncomfortably.

"I don't think she was serious, though," Liir blurted quickly, covering his own shock at this revelation rather well.

"Shit!" Fiyero almost yelled. He dashed out of the room in search of Elphaba, whom he finally found curled on the bed in another guest bedroom.

"Stop curtailing my autonomy," she hissed when she heard him come in the room.

"If that means what I think it means, I don't think I am," he said.

She laughed a little, sat up, and made room for him to sit beside her. Dangling her legs off the bed, she leaned into him.

"I'm sorry that I said that," she said quietly, as if forcing the words out. "I wouldn't really do that. Not now, not with you here."

"You shouldn't have said that in front of Liir," he reprimanded gently. She moaned.

"I know. I know. I honestly don't think I can screw that boy up any more than I already have."

"He's not as bad as you are, so you must have done something right." She whacked him with a pillow.

"Thanks."

"Any time. I'm sorry, too" he admitted. "I'm sorry if you feel like I'm-"

"Curtailing my autonomy," she volunteered.

"Right. I just don't want to lose you again."

"I know. I'm a bitch. An angry, bitter, cynical, pregnant bitch of a witch."

"No, you're not," he said pulling her closer. She lifted her eyebrows.

"I'm _not _pregnant?"

"No! The other things."

She laughed. "I know." She gave him mischievous look. "But as for the pregnant part…"

"Yes?"

"Let's just make absolutely certain."

…

Finally rid of her book group, Glinda hurried blithely up the stairs, looking forward immensely to seeing her friend again. She opened the door of the guestroom where Elphaba and Fiyero had stayed before, and found Liir, Nor, and Cass staring at her.

"What- where are Elphie and Fiyero?" she asked.

"In there," Liir pointed to the adjacent wall with false cheerfulness. A noise emanated from it regularly.

"Three guesses what they're doing," added Cass. Nor gave her a disgusted look.

"Oh." said Glinda. "Well then, we'll just wait."


	30. A Second Chance

Fiyero watched Elphaba sleep, always one of his greatest pleasures in the few laconic moments the pair had ever enjoyed. She wore one of the least…offensive…of Glinda's nightgowns, which still looked faintly ridiculous on the taller, skinner, green woman. But in sleep, the covers pulled high, curled half into a ball, she was lovely. Content, at peace, which Lurline knew she got little of.

And apparently she wouldn't now, either. Liir burst in, stumbling with the inherent clumsiness of adolescents outgrowing their bodies, and slammed the door accidentally into the wall, startling Elphaba awake and into a sitting position.

"What the hell?" she demanded, for a moment evidently unaware of her place in space and time. Then she saw Liir. "Oh…what is it, then?"

"Uh-uhm…" Liir had avoided calling either Elphaba or Fiyero anything since discovering his true parentage. "Sir Chuffrey is…"  
"Kumbricia _damn _that man," said Elphaba, leaping out of bed and yanking her day gown over the odious nightdress and hurrying downstairs.

Fiyero and Liir waited.

"Oh dear," Glinda's voice floated up the stairs. Liir laughed briefly and then disappeared quick as a wraith. Fiyero laughed himself, and lay back as if to go to sleep again, but a timid knock came at the door. Nor stood at the threshold uncertainly.

"Can I-"

"Oh, yes…come in."

Nor perched delicately at the edge of the bed, and her father found himself squirming under her blue gaze, an intense mirror of his own. Her eyes dropped suddenly, and Fiyero followed them to the red scar marring his chest.

Fiyero regarded the flushing, embarrassed girl at the tail end of adolescence, still colt-like and long-legged, her dark brown hair rippling to her waist, her eyes large and almond-shaped, electric in contrast to her mahogany skin. She was a stranger to him, her soul hidden behind his own eyes. He thought of Elphaba downstairs, of poor Liir lost in his own life, of this stranger-daughter before him, of his two dead sons he didn't even know, and wondered how they had become so broken.

"Why?" Nor asked suddenly.

"Nor."

"No, why? Why did you _do _this?"

"Nor…I was…in _love_."

"What about Mama?" her voice hitched with the name long unspoken, and beneath the scar Fiyero's heart tore to match it.

"I-I- you don't understand, Nor!" he burst out, feeling so accountable to this girl who was and was not his daughter. "Always, always in the Vinkus marriages were arranged. I was seven years old, Nor, what were you doing at seven? Had you ever even seen a boy besides your brothers?" She fell back in meek silence, eyes widened. But listening, she was listening. "But I went to Shiz, to university. I was the first ever to go from our tribe, the first to establish a firm connection with Oz proper! I saw a different world, Nor, I _lived _in it half the time, and I _wanted _it. And then- I saw her, there she was. Different like me and different from me, she didn't belong in this world either, but she'd broken away from her family obligations, pursued her own ideals without care for the delicate deceptions of polite society, created her own world, and she was free as hell and _so goddamned beautiful_ and I followed her." His tone softened. "Haven't you ever been in love, Nor?"

"I have been _locked in a prison cell for half my life_ because of you! Because of _her!_" Nor shrieked, and then stopped and recalled the soldiers, the crazy things she had felt and thought and wanted but not done. But that was hardly love.

Her father's face cracked with pain.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But so have I, or nearly, and love, Nor, love is worth it. You'll see. And you, you'll get to fall in love with whoever you choose. Free and clear."

"Yes, but I won't get a family," cried Nor, "I won't get back eight years of my life wasted because your accursed precious _witch_ was living-"

The heavy clearing of a throat echoed like an execution's drumbeat in the room. Nor turned slowly, leaden with dread. Elphaba stood in the doorway, arms folded over her chest, smiling crookedly, strangely relaxed.

"Auntie Witch, I-" Elphaba held up a hand.

"I deserve that, Nor," she admitted. "Some of the blame. But I can't take on everyone's, not anymore. Were my own purported father not an evil dictator, none of this would have happened." Fiyero gave her a shocked look, echoed by Nor, and Elphaba realized she had neglected that part of the story.

"Later," she sighed, waving Nor out of the room, not unkindly. As soon as the girl had closed the door behind her, Elphaba collapsed onto the bed and traced Fiyero's scar gently with an inquisitive green finger. "Guilt is immortal," she murmured. "No- guilt dies, but only when its bearer dies as well."

Fiyero pulled her closer.

"Stop brooding."

"Brooding is my nature; haven't you figured that out yet? It's all I do."

"Lie."

"All I do stems from it."

"Lie."

"Except you, and _ar mbainne beag _brood," she answered, slipping into a language he didn't know. "Our little brood," she clarified, and laughed. "I couldn't resist." She grinned. "And there's another one for you."

"Ha," he said, appreciating the elongated wordplay.

"Will Nor be all right?" Elphaba asked, changing the subject.

"You are, aren't you, and you lost your mother a year younger than she did. And found out your parents weren't quite faithful." He paused. "Speaking of your parents-"

She lay back, groaned. "I know. The Wizard is my father. So much irony it's disturbing, which leads me to think even more that I'm a great celestial pawn. Funny, since I don't even believe in the celestial, but Yackle…"

"None of that matters," Fiyero told her softly, trailing kisses up her neck and onto her cheek, "all that matters is that we're here, you and me and Nor and Liir and this baby, and we have a second chance."


End file.
